Icebreaker regional GM ANZ, Luke Doddrell discusses how Icebreaker has responded to the pandemic and what it has introduced to maintain trade and connection to customers during this time.
What have been the trending items during the lockdown period?
We saw high engagement with simple communications which focused on natural merino essentials; pieces that will keep you warm and cozy working from home, whilst also looking good on those Zoom calls!
In particular our women’s crush pants and our helliers hoodie were both popular choices with Australian customers.
Overall in April we saw our Natural Living Collection grow 3x compared to last year.
Have there been any shifts in consumer purchasing behaviours?
With our six Australian stores closed, we saw a rush to the website with significant jumps in traffic.
We also saw an increase in women visiting the site and a 28% increase in desktop traffic.
There was also a big jump in conversion rate, with far more people buying and less just browsing.
What digital initiatives has Icebreaker introduced during this time?
In the first few weeks of lockdown we wanted to give our customers a choice on whether their purchases were ‘essential’ or not.
We introduced shipping options to allow customers to choose immediate delivery, or to wait for lock downs to lift.
This allowed us to free up some capacity at our third party logistics partners to ship essential items like food and medical equipment.
We also switched to a more reactive weekly communications schedule, with ‘digital mini-campaigns’ focusing on local insights.
For example cozy pieces from our collection to work from home, train locally and staff favourites. Our main communication channels were social media, email and the website.
Our Nature.Rewards loyalty program recently launched in Australia and we’re excited that our loyal Australian customers and VIP’s can also now reap the benefits.
How has Icebreaker social media adapted to the current climate? How is it contributing?
Social is an important part of our marketing mix and we saw good engagement with feel-good content.
Internally we run weekly Flock Fit fitness classes and we trialled opening those up as a Story on Instagram which was very well received by our customers.
Has the business discovered anything new during this period that it will continue even after lockdowns ease?
We already had great systems and processes in place for working from home, but this period has given us the opportunity to fast forward a lot of that work and will allow more staff flexibility.
Our website and digital marketing will become even more important to reach customers and that will be an on-going focus.
What are the plans for Icebreaker going forward?
We will continue our mission; driven by the belief that nature has the solutions, to provide natural performance alternatives to synthetic based apparel to create a healthier more sustainable future for our species and the planet.
Australia is a massive opportunity for us as customers move towards more natural choices and we’re excited to bring new products and innovations to customers this season.