Specialty Fashion Group How to use the data to sell more clothes

      Listed in detail Fashion Group company specialized as much data on its 6 million customers that it plans to expand into lifestyle products to customers in a common goal oversize, the middle-aged women.

Alison Henriksen CFO says the company has collected information about its customers since its inception 20 years ago and can now analyze the data to find new business opportunities through IT investments in the last ten years.

"Our market is underserved in general, because it is not particularly high, especially not young and not very healthy," says Henriksen.

"We see a great opportunity to use our knowledge of our customers, expand their knowledge and offer products and services that they can not get anywhere else., It must not be, fashionable clothes, there may be other lifestyle products, and that is as we expand our share of his portfolio to see our ability. "

Labels specialized group that includes Katie, Müller, Autograph, City Chic Crossroads clothing chains have already expanded into jewelry, shoes and lingerie. Henriksen says the company is now looking for new opportunities, such as life experiences, holidays and even financial products.

The company is the largest fashion retailers in Australia, according to Henriksen. It has 900 stores brick and mortar here and in New Zealand, five online stores focused on the Australian market and a separate store in the United States.

Henriksen adds that the market generally mature size or age, or both, and focuses on the value end of the market, competing with the likes of Target, Big W, Kmart, and Rockman's Suzanne Grae.
Investments in IT infrastructure

Henriksen, the CFO also has a group of IT functions and on their marketing, the company standardized on a new enterprise system, including customer relationship management, there are about six or seven years. This means that all data was in one place.

The database of members is 7 million, or about 6 million, the adjusted overlap about 55 percent of the market for Australian women.

"There are about three years ago we realized that we find a way to had to find better and easier to use the data, because what we do have so far been downloading files in Excel and try to manipulate the data," she said. "We can only do so much, and certainly did not get there in terms of speed, it's easy."

The company has integrated data on Alterian resellers assuming the software. A year ago, SDL and Alterian bought specialized Fashion Group now manages the software internally, through a direct relationship with SDL.

About 80 percent of sales are members, whether online or in-store. Henriksen says the high cost of shipping, which means that they focus their campaigns on the 2.8 million members who have provided the e-mail addresses, and this leads directly to sales.

"The share of sales that we can we learn from these customers to engage directly with them has increased," she said. "Two years ago, coming less than 30 percent of our revenue from our members by ail, today nearly 50 percent. Due to our ability to interact directly with him, we see them again."

The company uses SDL segment customers by the inclination to buy, whether it according to a bargain hunter or more interest in fashion next season and so on, and Schneider electronic communications. The dealer has also found that customers who do not know now shop online are more likely in the future.

Henriksen said it is quite common for e-mail campaigns, the company have an open and click-through rates of 40-50 percent, and because they use control groups know that they., The impact on sales A typical email campaign provides an increase of at least 3 percent of sales, and because there are only seven people in the team data, which means a return on investment in the thousands of percent.
Shortage of skilled data analysts

Henriksen said it has a few university graduates and train them, but almost all of the older members of the team were recruited from the United Kingdom.

"This is a challenge not only in detail, but overall, to find and keep people who really analytical skills and ability," she said. "You can not be analytical geeks, they need to have commercial and folded to that market. The team that we have built, I made it almost all in the United Kingdom, because this is an area, especially for the retail store where the British really leads the way - our reference Tesco and John Lewis is another example of the incredible success with their omni-channel strategy. "

"We always want to employ Australians - it is more expensive and more complicated to recruit someone from abroad and bring them to Australia This is not our choice, but the reality is, dass we have a lack of resources in Australia in some areas and in detail, we have a number of functions in which it is impossible that the people we need. On the Australian retail market we have many years to come late in this area, we just do not have people with experience. "

Under British recruits were on 457 visas while some had Australian links. Henriksen said that changes to the 457 visa system, it becomes more difficult.

"He just wants to say that it will take more time to get people on board, it does not mean that we can find more people in Australia," she said.