Fast fashion chain Supre relaunched its website in November 2009, earning itself a nomination at this year’s Online Retail Industry Awards. The e-commerce site has multiple platforms, with integrated social media content, an interactive feedback tab, shopping points for orders and referrals, dynamic product recommendations and a dedicated blog to list a few.
The retail chain also partnered with beauty company Johnson & Johnson for an interactive in-store kiosk several years ago, an area the ACRS sees as a key trend for retailers in the future. However, Supre international brand manager Catherine van der Meulen reveals that some initiatives work better than others.
What is the benefit of having an e-commerce arm?
Online sales are really strong at the moment even though retail conditions on the floor are still really tough. Supre online has had a 50 per cent sales increase each week for the last three months and a 75 per cent increase since we changed the e-commerce site from November last year. With regards to traffic on the site and unique visitors we currently are attracting an average of 200,000 unique visitors per month.
Where are your key sales online?
Close to 60 per cent of our online traffic comes from Singapore, but we don’t do any advertising or promotion in that market. There’s a service there that allows say, a group of girls to put in an order together and if that order is valued at over $200, they get free shipping to their country. A lot of it seems to be coming from that area.
What about Facebook activity?
We’ve had gradual growth in our Facebook site since the beginning of 2006 and then earlier this year, all of a sudden, we jumped from 80,000 fans to 120,000 in four weeks. We still haven’t figured out what caused the spike.... but just to give you an idea of how active our Facebook page is: last night, we posted a new comment and [12 hours later] there are 343 replies and 110 likes. There is one Facebook post a day from Supre so the rest is coming from [consumers].
Does Facebook drive sales to Supre online?
A majority of our followers on Facebook are 14 to 18-year-olds, so it doesn’t all necessarily convert into sales. We get an enormous amount of online traffic but around three per cent of it converts into sales. That said, it’s really important for us into terms of researching and developing products. We have a function on our website which allows shoppers to shop by look: so right now, the three looks are Tom Boy, Femme Fatale and Rocker. We’re developing the next three looks by asking people on Facebook what their look is. A lot of [customers] also use our website and Facebook as ‘window shopping’, so they know what kinds of things we have in-store before they go shopping.
How many people manage these platforms?
We have a an external representative at Mudomedia who manages our Facebook page and Supre blog. That started last year. We also have two people who work in-house to manager our website. In terms of multichannel retailing, Supre teamed up with Johnson & Johnson for an in-store kiosk.
Was this a successful venture?
We did that several years ago and it was a bit of a failure actually! It was at a time when we were using out stores to sell media – so brands could advertise on the back of our change rooms for example. Johnson & Johnson wanted to take that advertising to the next level, so they installed these sort of giant Johnson & Jonhson bottles with computer screens. It was an interactive station and customers could get prizes and go into competitions for purchasing [Clean and Clear] products. But it was not very cost effective at all. Not many people were interacting with it and it was taking up retail space on our shop floor. There were two booths in [select] stores but they all left in three months. At the end of the day, there’s so many technologies out there, you really have to decide what works for your brand.
What about iPhone applications?
Again, we have a following of 14 to 18-year- old girls and I think something like five per cent own an iPhone. It’s quite expensive to introduce something like that for such a small [segment], but we’d look at it again if the numbers grow. We’ve been quoted $40,000 to develop an application and $75,000 for an application which has an [e-commerce function].