Chinese Laundry cleans up omnichannel inventory
Los Angeles – Accepting an online order and then cancelling it due to inventory shortages is probably the most damaging customer interaction an omnichannel retailer can have. Vertical specialty footwear retailer Chinese Laundry, which operates a direct-to-consumer website as well as two stores in Las Vegas and one in Canoga Park, California, is well aware of this problem.
After moving from a single inventory system to a set of disparate systems in an effort to improve performance at both the in-store POS and online, Chinese Laundry discovered it was having issues with fulfilling e-commerce orders. E-commerce and brick-and-mortar inventories were out of sync or not available in real time.
“The integrations were dramatically more cumbersome than we anticipated, resulting in inventory systems that were constantly out of sync,” said Scott Cohn, VP e-commerce Chinese Laundry. “
To resolve the issue, Chinese Laundry decided to unify inventory and all other operations for e-commerce on a single platform from New York-based retail management systems provider Celerant Technology Corp. Chinese Laundry had an existing relationship with Celerant on the in-store POS side of the operation.
“We built a new website on the existing back-end data, so it was a simple integration from that standpoint,” said Cohn. “We use independent tools for tasks like analytics and retargeting.”
In making the switch back to a single, integrated e-commerce platform Chinese Laundry has seen a 20% drop in cancelled orders and a drastic rise in cost efficiency, sales visibility and the growth of the e-commerce channel. All while the retailer is still maintaining its brick-and-mortar locations and wholesale business.
“We have seen higher online conversion and sales, reduced time on site and a dramatic increase in fulfillment rate and customer satisfaction,” said Cohn.
Chinese Laundry is satisfied enough with its e-commerce performance to be working on expanding its digital retail reach. Future plans include creating a responsive e-commerce site that will automatically optimize to any device screen size, as well as developing integrations to sell goods on third-party online marketplaces.
After moving from a single inventory system to a set of disparate systems in an effort to improve performance at both the in-store POS and online, Chinese Laundry discovered it was having issues with fulfilling e-commerce orders. E-commerce and brick-and-mortar inventories were out of sync or not available in real time.
“The integrations were dramatically more cumbersome than we anticipated, resulting in inventory systems that were constantly out of sync,” said Scott Cohn, VP e-commerce Chinese Laundry. “
To resolve the issue, Chinese Laundry decided to unify inventory and all other operations for e-commerce on a single platform from New York-based retail management systems provider Celerant Technology Corp. Chinese Laundry had an existing relationship with Celerant on the in-store POS side of the operation.
“We built a new website on the existing back-end data, so it was a simple integration from that standpoint,” said Cohn. “We use independent tools for tasks like analytics and retargeting.”
In making the switch back to a single, integrated e-commerce platform Chinese Laundry has seen a 20% drop in cancelled orders and a drastic rise in cost efficiency, sales visibility and the growth of the e-commerce channel. All while the retailer is still maintaining its brick-and-mortar locations and wholesale business.
“We have seen higher online conversion and sales, reduced time on site and a dramatic increase in fulfillment rate and customer satisfaction,” said Cohn.
Chinese Laundry is satisfied enough with its e-commerce performance to be working on expanding its digital retail reach. Future plans include creating a responsive e-commerce site that will automatically optimize to any device screen size, as well as developing integrations to sell goods on third-party online marketplaces.