Making sky-high sales at airport stores: How Brooks Brothers conquered this niche market

Every retail store is unique and faces its own set of challenges, but airport stores are certainly in a league of their own. They must tackle hurdles that are uncommon with traditional retail stores, such as being constrained by limited space, catering to a distinct customer profile, and navigating unconventional shopper journeys. In turn, airport retailers must use specialized strategies backed by the latest in retail tech to meet their KPIs and see soaring sales.

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Impressed by the sales of the Brooks Brothers airport store, we set out to explore how they achieved them. 

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Check out their performance in the last 6 months:

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We sat down with Aniket, the store manager, to understand how they were able to do this.

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Q1. Congratulations on your amazing performance. Could you share how you achieved these numbers?

Aniket:  Thank you! Well, firstly, because we are an airport store, there is no option for interstore transfers. So in the past, I was unable to serve a customer when I had a stockout at my store. 

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Plus, since we have a small floor at the airport, we do not get the entire catalog from the brand. The endless aisle feature acted as an extension of our own store's inventory, and we began showing the entire brand catalog to our customers. 

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In this way, we could ensure that we never missed a sale due to issues like size, color, or stock unavailability at the store.

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Q2. Besides preventing loss of sales, how did you improve other aspects of the store's business?

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Aniket: As I mentioned before, we do not have any omnichannel sales or interstore transfers. So, we depend on walk-ins. Since it is an airport, walk-in customers usually have only 15-20 minutes in the store while waiting for their flight.

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There are times when the customer wants something but is rushing to catch their flight. In cases like these, they do not even have the time for billing. Since we can always trigger a payment link or offer COD through the app, we take the customer's address and place an order via the Fynd Store OS app. 

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Our biggest advantage is being able to tell the customer that they can return a product if they don't like it, and they will receive a full refund. This really helps in improving our conversions at the store.

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Q3. Great! We've also heard that you guys use distance selling effectively to boost store sales. 

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Aniket: Custom catalogs have streamlined our distance selling process and have helped us get more sales. Our clients are mainly business-class customers, and they prefer not to go out and shop at malls. Since we've built up a solid reputation, they contact us directly if they need anything.

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Earlier, in these cases, we would click product pictures at the store, send via WhatsApp, and then send our staff to deliver the products and collect payments. While we were getting the job done, it wasn't an efficient process. 

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Now, we create specific collections for our customers (since we know their choices and sizes). Customers browse the collection link, wishlist what they want, and share their choices with us. We then place an order via the Fynd app. 

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The best part is that customers feel like we’re sharing the store microsite, which adds to our credibility and the customer shopping experience. Plus thanks to the smooth browsing journey, we usually get upsell opportunities as well.

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Q4. That’s awesome! Any parting notes for us?

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Aniket: Yes, we’d like to give a shoutout to the Fynd Account Manager, Ujjawal, who has been a valuable liaison for us whenever issues like missing catalog products or last-minute deliveries arise.

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We also appreciate their people-driven approach to work. To succeed, it's crucial that our team fully embraces this vision, and establish internal targets to assess our performance.

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The fruitful partnership between Fynd and Brooks Brothers shows the power of technology in addressing the unique challenges of the retail world. 

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‍Reach out to us and discover how our in-store solutions can help your sales take off in every market.