SYDNEY: Cue Clothing, the fashion retailer, claims to be a leader in omnichannel shopping in Australia and New Zealand, thanks to its development of a unique retail ecosystem that caters not only to the needs of customers but also in-store staff.
That has involved “a lot of heavy lifting around core platforms”, according to Shane Lenton, chief information officer of the business, whose brands include Cue, Veronika Maine and Dion Lee.
“There is no point offering customers ‘click and collect’ or whatever innovation it is if the underlying infrastructure and solutions are not in order,” he told CIO. “You can’t fake it.”
Without that underlying set-up in place, he continued, “you will be spending all your time putting out fires and distracting other parts of the business”.
Cue, he said, is “offering a true unified customer solution” via a commerce platform that provides a single view of all customer and inventory data, meaning that every touchpoint can generate sales which can be delivered to stores or customers’ homes.
“We have this strategy of ‘buy anywhere, fill anywhere’,” Lenton explained.
“We push the online sales into stores so [that] the stores and the individuals who pull the sales from online also get rewarded,” he added. “From a retail perspective, we have diluted the channel conflict.”
The stores themselves are a competitive advantage over online-only retailers, he believes, thanks to the combination of footprint and inventory, with customers able to buy any item from any location in real-time.
“We are giving them a lot of opportunity to sell rather than sitting with one channel. They have got all these opportunities and touchpoints, so that has also helped us with our stock allocations,” he said.
“When people ask me what is our online retail strategy, from my perspective, it is a retail strategy,” Lenton stated. “It is all one channel for us. That is what we worked very hard to achieve.”
That has involved “a lot of heavy lifting around core platforms”, according to Shane Lenton, chief information officer of the business, whose brands include Cue, Veronika Maine and Dion Lee.
“There is no point offering customers ‘click and collect’ or whatever innovation it is if the underlying infrastructure and solutions are not in order,” he told CIO. “You can’t fake it.”
Without that underlying set-up in place, he continued, “you will be spending all your time putting out fires and distracting other parts of the business”.
Cue, he said, is “offering a true unified customer solution” via a commerce platform that provides a single view of all customer and inventory data, meaning that every touchpoint can generate sales which can be delivered to stores or customers’ homes.
“We have this strategy of ‘buy anywhere, fill anywhere’,” Lenton explained.
“We push the online sales into stores so [that] the stores and the individuals who pull the sales from online also get rewarded,” he added. “From a retail perspective, we have diluted the channel conflict.”
The stores themselves are a competitive advantage over online-only retailers, he believes, thanks to the combination of footprint and inventory, with customers able to buy any item from any location in real-time.
“We are giving them a lot of opportunity to sell rather than sitting with one channel. They have got all these opportunities and touchpoints, so that has also helped us with our stock allocations,” he said.
“When people ask me what is our online retail strategy, from my perspective, it is a retail strategy,” Lenton stated. “It is all one channel for us. That is what we worked very hard to achieve.”
Sourced from CIO; additional content by WARC staff
