Online shopping is quickly becoming a large sales channel for many companies, but for a large portion of luxury brands out there, it’s still a strictly brick-and-mortar world. According to Bain Consulting, roughly 40 percent of luxury brands don’t sell online. Some analysts believe the shift to eCommerce could bring in around $43 billion between now and 2020 for these brands.
Why haven’t these brands come online yet? For starters, a lot of these brands have retail partners that sell their products and keeping a spot in store is important so customers can experience their brand. How else will perfumes be smelt, or a luxury piece of clothing be tried on for sizing? Not to mention handling returns and exhanges. Also of importance is using their retail partners to expose new prospective customers to their products for trial, purchase, and repeat purchase. So when a brand’s eCommerce initiative is direct to consumer it creates a channel conflict between selling online direct and the brick and mortar retail stores you aim to partner with. But the world is changing and customer expectations including the way consumers buy products are changing.
Consumers may browse retail stores but it doesn’t always lead to a purchase in store. Whether the customer is strapped for time, money, or simply hasn’t done enough research to feel comfortable buying they may delay the purchase and have what we call post-almost-purchase remorse. Most of us turn to the Internet to do research on a product 80% of the time before purchasing. Brands and their retail partners want to be there to capture the sale opportunity when the timing is right for the customer. This could be at anytime around the clock and your brand or store has to be ready from any channel to handle this sale.
So here’s where ShipEarly comes in. Our eCommerce product integrates your retailers or dealers into the checkout process and eliminates any channel conflict. From your website customers can buy directly from one of your retail partners. Your now shared customers are provided with flexible pick-up options to provide product to your customers. These options include instore pick-up and ship from store for retailers who carry physical inventory. For those who do not have items in stock we have a ship to store option where customers receive the benefit of free shipping lowering their overall purchase price and making your product look more attractive to their wallet.
So in the last mile of the sale when the customer is ready to press the buy button, well… Let them and it won’t upset any of your existing sales channels. In fact it will make retailers more loyal to your brand as you help them turnover more of your inventory keeping your much coveted spot in store secure from competitors. Welcome to brand assisted omni-channel eCommerce.
