How Steve Madden stores cascaded into enhanced customer experience, better retention, and 10-15% increased sales with Fynd Store

Overview

Steve Madden is a premium international market leader in the footwear industry. The brand has a high brand recall because of its unique and creative designs. The 31 Steve Madden stores were already doing well when they were integrated with Fynd.

Yet, with growth comes unique problems to solve. There were hidden opportunities for growth. Enter Fynd, which not only increased the sale of every store by as much as 15% but also improved customer experience leading to better customer retention.

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Problem

Steve Madden stores have a high influx of customers. Top styles fly out of shelves faster than ever. Talk to any #MaddenGirl and you will see the disappointment of not finding that limited style. Stores were losing sales because of frequent stockouts in bestseller styles. There was an opportunity for an untapped 6-8% business. While a particular size was out of stock in one store, chances were, it was there in at least 2-3 other stores. Inter-store transfer processes were cumbersome. Customer experience and satisfaction were going down.

Stores were ready to sell more, the question was how? The brand could have either gone ahead and streamlined the inventory, which takes a lot of time, effort, and money, or could have partnered with a tech partner. Steve Madden chose the latter: Fynd

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‍Solution

Save the Sale

Fynd integrated the entire inventory of stores onto the Fynd Store app. Every store could then virtually house the pan-India Inventory. The objective for stores was to save the sale by placing orders on the Fynd Store app in case the customer could not find the right size or a fit within the store. So every time a store ran out of a particular SKU, or other SKUs which were not allotted to them, they would find the nearest fulfillment store of their choice and order on behalf of the customer on the app. Collective efforts from store staff also ensured enhanced knowledge sharing within Fashion Consultants from different stores.

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Digital Catalogs

Stores now had a novel way to present the pan-India brand Inventory, via digital lookbooks. Customers could discover out-of-stock options, or styles that were not present at the stores, and could directly order. During the pandemic there was a huge drop in in-store walk-ins. Hence, stores opted for real-time digital catalogs built by Fynd. With a few clicks, a store could build a collection on the store/area/region level across styles and categories. This flexible approach towards creating catalogs went a long way in ensuring a personalized approach towards outbound selling.

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‍Leveraging Fynd Assets

With Fynd Platform the brand was successfully able to perform everything from catalog management to inventory integration, and from, marketing to finance & reconciliation. The self-serve model of Fynd ensured that the brand could upload the catalog, take out finance reports, and set up marketing campaigns with ease. The Fynd OMS helped stores to view all the incoming orders in one go. With order tracking, escalating for urgent deliveries, pickups, and taking back returned styles with ease.

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Implementation

Human-driven approach

Stores are hard-wired to sell only what’s available physically at the store. Adopting a new tech and making it a success is a challenge. The ordering store was not ready to give their sale to another store at first. Hence it was important to incentivize the ordering store. Adding sales through Fynd Store in the PLI (performance-linked incentives) of ordering stores worked out well for Steve Madden. Attractive Fynd incentives were also a major factor in motivating stores to adopt omnichannel.

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Leveraging shopper journey

Fynd adds value by digitizing a shopper, who was going away without purchasing. While there were 800-1000 month-on-month unique shoppers via Fynd, the brand was active in leveraging these shoppers. Fynd’s collection-sharing (real-time digital catalogs) ensured that there was an upsell opportunity. Store increased their sales by upto 40% by capitalizing on repeat purchases via outbound selling.

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‍Optimizing for leakages

Leakages, which consist of cancellation and returns were at an all-time high with higher sales. Product availability (PNAs) was a big reason for cancellations. Fynd Account Managers, appointed for the brand's success, identified the reason being the inventory sync and optimized it. RTO (return-to-origin) was another contributing factor. Improvement in communication journey flow helped in reducing leakages, for example, communicating with the ordering store after the first failed pickup attempt, improving on prepaid orders contributed to fewer RTOs in months to follow.

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‍Results

Stores were able to add an additional 10-15% to their topline. This number was higher during EOSS (end of season sales). Customer satisfaction and retention went up due to faster deliveries and timely returns/refunds. With contactless payments via cart sharing, distance selling via digital catalogs and microsites, real-time refunds after pickup, Steve Madden stores were able to gain the trust of their customer and make omnichannel a success.

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‍Reach out to us at brands@fynd.com to start your omnichannel journey today.

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