Shoffr and Swarovski gained star status at The Greenhouse for being the first to launch their POC, just one month into the program. We sat with Grace Khoury (Swarovski) and Abhishek Dadoo (Shoffr) to hear about what they’ve achieved during the program.
Abishek: Shoffr converts online traffic to in-store traffic. This helps retail brands improve digital ROI by giving online customers an option to reserve products at their nearest store and increasing footfall.
The Greenhouse: Grace, what was the pain point you were looking to solve?
Grace: At Swarovski, we wanted to test out Shoffr’s reserve and collect feature. Being a jewelry brand, customers want to feel and see the product before purchasing – so bringing them to the store is important. Reserve and collect offers customers convenience and quick checkout, while also allowing us to gather data on transactions.
GH: What are the KPIs you're tracking to measure success?
Abishek: Seeing that we launched our solution early on in the program, the KPIs we’ve been monitoring were “Reservation Rate”, “Reservation to Footfall Rate”, and “Footfall to Purchase Rate”.
Grace: From our end, we were looking at the enhanced consumer journey, opportunities to cross-sell and up-sell. Through interactions between sales executives and customers, we gained qualitative feedback on why customers were motivated to try our click and reserve feature, as opposed to walk-ins.
GH: Abhishek, you’ve worked with brands in other markets, can you tell us a little about how our market is different to those?
Abhishek: In other markets we noticed that a higher percentage of people show up at the stores – but a very small percentage end up buying the product they came in for. In the UAE it’s the exact opposite, but net-net at the end, from reservation to purchase rate evens out at around 15%.
GH: Do you think "Reserve at Store" cannibalizes e-commerce revenues?
Abhishek: When the “Reserve At Store” feature is advertized online, it has the potential to increase site traffic; so that’s great for e-commerce to begin with as well as for brands that don't have a fully fledged e-comm site yet. We also have data which shows that online conversion rates have stayed the same before and after Reserve At Store was implemented.
GH: Grace, you’ve been moving full on with the transformation, how has this POC helped the process?
Grace: I've found that it’s inevitable for us to adopt the startup mindset. This is important across all stakeholders; from my team, IT, BOH and sales executives. By setting strong and clear KPIs, stores are able to see the benefits and opportunities of adopting the hybrid mindset.
Working with startups, we’ve found that their able to quickly adapt to our requests. Considering this is a 3-month POC, speed of integration, development and customization of features are key to ensuring roll-outs are smooth and efficient.
This is only the beginning of many impactful relationships between brands and startups – the results of the work are yet to be measured, but early indicators of success are already unraveling.