Benefits Of Partnering With Kibo
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Increase In Revenue
Laura Canada increased revenue by 25% by unlocking store inventory for online shoppers
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No. Of Stores It Started Fulfillment From
After installing order management, the retailer was able to start fulfilling orders from their 150+ stores.
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Increase In Online Sales
Kibo was part of a general ecommerce upgrade that ultimately created a 400% online sales growth.
CUSTOMER PROFILE
As of today, Laura Canada, the popular Canadian women’s fashion retailer, has more than 150 stores across the country and a large ecommerce presence. But several years ago, the company had a very small team that was hampered by rigid technology, processes and a lack of flexibility over the order lifecycle. Subsequently, Marco Nobert, VP of CRM, Digital Marketing, Ecommerce was hired to reinvigorate the company’s commerce approach, with a focus on delivering a seamless end-to-end experience for customers.
Laura Canada wanted an omnichannel operation that was efficient and offered a smooth customer experience both online and off. To do so, Marco and his team set out to find technology partners that would help Laura Canada meet this challenge, and that would offer the flexibility needed to grow over time. After some vendor vetting, Laura Canada selected Kibo to create an order management system that leveraged both distribution centers and in-store shipping.
Kibo’s unified commerce technology proved to be particularly valuable to Laura Canada during the onset of COVID-19 in March 2020. Marco’s team had the flexibility to reassign stores as warehouses, and to modify them further into hybrid fulfillment centers as stores began to reopen. This has allowed the company to ensure relatively smooth order management throughout the different stages of the crisis.
THE CHALLENGE
Laura Canada tends to have low-depth inventory, which means that a single store or distribution center does not have a large amount of inventory across available sizes and styles. What’s more Laura Canada was having to operate without a fully resourced ecommerce team.
In order to support online and in-store customers across Canada, the women’s fashion retailer needed to be able to configure shipping and fulfillment options that would quickly and easily get the right item to the right customer, no matter where they were.
THE APPROACH
Laura Canada tends to have low-depth inventory, which means that a single store or distribution center does not have a large amount of inventory across available sizes and styles. What’s more Laura Canada was having to operate without a fully resourced ecommerce team. In order to support online and in-store customers across Canada, the women’s fashion retailer needed to be able to configure shipping and fulfillment options that would quickly and easily get the right item to the right customer, no matter where they were.
This new process quickly enabled Laura Canada to increase sales by 25%, and led to a dramatic 400% increase in online sales in the 3 years after changes were implemented at the company.
PREPARED FOR UNCERTAINTY
The team’s foresight and careful planning ensured that the company was wellpositioned when store closures happened in March. Given COVID, the retailer wanted to prioritize the safety of their employees and customers, but also needed to ensure that they could still manage and fulfill online orders.
Similarly, when Laura Canada decided to reopen in June, they were able to adjust how they fulfilled their ecommerce orders yet again. The traffic in stores was low, as people were still afraid to go to stores and malls. So the retailer changed their fulfillment strategy, fulfilling orders from their different store locations, diverting orders away from their central distribution center. This flexibility allowed Laura Canada to take pressure off the center, which was also tasked with taking in new products and managing inventory that needed to go to each store.
By using stores to fulfill orders, Laura Canada was not only able to save on shipping costs, it was able to fulfill orders more quickly as well.
