Updating a Classic

Before the first cold snap of 2011, iconic outerwear brand London Fog aimed to sell merchandise from a domain previously unheard of: its own website. Though the company had an online presence — and regular traffic — consumers had to go elsewhere to buy.

Richard Kay, president of London Fog outwear licensee Herman Kay, says he’s been “pleasantly surprised” with the e-commerce results. “The demand has exceeded expectation in the space,” he says. The success in this story, however, has as much to do with a strategic partnership as it does popular coats and a solid reputation.

‘An agile partner’
New York-based London Fog turned to ShopVisible for its e-commerce solution, as well as help in customer service, order fulfillment, staffing and other areas.

“It’s something we see happening increasingly,” says Sean Cook, CEO of e-commerce platform provider ShopVisible. “There’s a big trend in the market right now. You’ve got brands that ... have not traditionally sold directly to consumers. ...[And] consumers are now looking directly to brands and manufacturers to build and develop a relationship, and have the ability to purchase directly from those brands.”

Companies like London Fog represent a growing portion of ShopVisible’s business. Many companies have already built some sort of e-commerce technology in-house. It’s too demanding to innovate and keep up in that model, Cook says, “so they look to us to be an agile partner that can help with re-platforming and for ongoing innovation.”

In some ways, London Fog has a distinct advantage, Cook says. “They don’t have all this embedded technology that they have to worry about unplugging and unraveling. [They could] just jump right in and use best-in-class, innovative technology.”

Good thing, too; the companies came together in February and kicked off the project in March. The original timeline — to launch LondonFog.com ahead of coat season — was aggressive, Cook says, but things went so smoothly that the deadline was beaten by weeks.

New divisions, new channels
Cook realizes that moving e-commerce can change an organization’s culture. In the case of London Fog, the effort required adding an entirely new business unit.

“Previously they didn’t have the people in-house that were going to do this,” he says. “But they were excited not only about the great opportunity for revenue, but also that it ... gives them a new frontier for marketing and customer interaction.”

Overall, Kay says, it’s been a great partnership — and a great next step in the company’s efforts to reach new markets. And it wasn’t a moment too soon.

“You’ve got a customer who’s engaging with companies in numerous ways,” Cook says. “They’ll hear an ad on the radio and, at the next traffic light, they check out the mobile site on their phone and maybe forward the promotion to their e-mail address. Then they browse the product catalog on their tablet device as they’re sitting waiting for a table, and go back to their computer and transact.

“It’s really critical that retailers and brands have the ability to see and attribute the different channels’ activities to a particular customer and to that revenue,” he says. “What you need to do as a company is to understand that all of these touchpoints complement one another and contribute to an entire customer experience and to the transaction that’s going to happen, whether it’s at a bricks-and-mortar store or online... If you can see and map the activities across them all, then that is power.”

‘Bring it on’
In the midst of the London Fog project, ShopVisible received word that client Vapour Organic Beauty was chosen to be featured on NBC’s “Today” show. It was a great opportunity for the burgeoning Taos, N.M., brand of next-generation mineral cosmetics. But it came with a warning: The sites of much larger companies had been overwhelmed or crashed after similar segments had aired. It wasn’t just that they should expect several thousand orders, “Today” representatives said, but that the site could receive a couple million hits.

Vapour captured 1.8 million visitors when the program aired in April 2011, compared to a daily average of less than 1,000. The daily order volume skyrocketed 20,000 percent, and the company saw a 400 percent increase in revenue over the same quarter the previous year.

But the site didn’t crash. Working with ShopVisible, Vapour was able to replicate VapourBeauty.com on numerous offsite servers.

“I usually have the attitude of, ‘Bring it on and we’ll figure it out,’” says Vapour co-founder and CEO Krysia Boinis. “I’m naïve in some situations, and I certainly was with this. I don’t understand all the technicalities of the backend and the servers and the way information travels.

“We were concerned because we knew that our reputation would be incredibly tarnished if we couldn’t pull it off,” she says. “But because ShopVisible did pull it off ... we looked like the rock stars, our website looked better than the big boys’ and our fulfillment was better than they expected.”

ShopVisible strives to “set realistic expectations with our clients,” Cook says. “We don’t ever want there to be a feeling that we’ve under-delivered. It is ultimately a partnership, and together we determine if there are things we should reasonably put into phase two, either because the client is not ready or it’s something that will take more work on our side,” he says. “It’s that kind of interaction that makes these things possible.”