Kenneth Cole moves e-commerce site to hosted cloud platform

A specialty fashion brand is migrating its online store to the cloud-based Nogin commerce-as-a-service (CaaS) platform.

As a result of this shift to a hosted, cloud-based online retail solution, Kenneth Cole Productions intends to gain the ability to deliver best-in-class e-commerce to its customers; as well as increase sales, profits and conversion rates. The company also seeks to execute research and development upgrades in real-time.

Kenneth Cole is leveraging Nogin's cloud services and experts layered on top of the Nogin Intelligent Commerce Platform. This implementation model enables Kenneth Cole to scale with demand generated by a platform with machine learning and optimization capabilities. 

From a business standpoint, the company hopes to leverage Intelligent Commerce software, people and process to achieve benefits including reduced free shipping and fulfillment costs, more efficient media spend, higher conversion rates, and stronger gross margin.

Intelligent Commerce is a full-stack e-commerce platform that includes research and development, sales optimization, and machine learning, along with artificial intelligence-driven marketing and fulfillment.

Kenneth Cole has been attempting to boost its digital commerce sales with innovative techniques. In May 2021, the company partnered with interactive entertainment provider Zynga to launch its new Kenneth Cole Pride 2021 collection in the casual mobile game “High Heels!” This limited-time collaboration, which ran during the first two weeks of June, marked the first time that Kenneth Cole fashion items were featured in a mobile game. 

During the promotion, gamers had the ability to outfit a character and play the “High Heels!” game in product from the LGBTQ-friendly Kenneth Cole Pride 2021 collection, including the brand’s KAM sneakers, shirts that state “Being Different is What We Have in Common” and other accessories such as sunglasses, watches and mask lanyards.

In the game, players maneuvered an increasingly challenging catwalk in high heels, which stack higher as they complete levels. Players progressed through a series of worldwide fashion shows in global cities including London, Beijing, Paris and New York. Earning access to new customization elements as they advanced, players were able to update their characters with new clothing, fashion, hairstyles and shoes.

“Like so many other brands, Kenneth Cole was caught between extremely expensive and inflexible legacy enterprise software on the one hand, and inadequate, lower-end small-to-medium-sized business platforms on the other," said Jan-Christopher Nugent, CEO of Tustin, Calif.-based Nogin. "Intelligent Commerce provides a long-term delivery model that will help Kenneth Cole profitably keep pace with Big Retail. Just as Amazon Web Services was revolutionary for on-demand cloud-hosting, the Nogin platform is a game-changer in e-commerce.”

Headquartered in New York City, Kenneth Cole Productions operates an e-commerce site and also sells apparel, accessories, luggage and footwear products via third-party retail partners. The company operates six separate apparel, footwear and accessories lines – Kenneth Cole Collection, Kenneth Cole New York, Gentle Souls, Kenneth Cole Reaction, Kenneth Cole Unlisted, and Tribeca.