Overview

Red Chief, a market leader in the leather footwear industry, came up with a specific problem—to empower stores to sell more to walk-in customers. With the Fynd.com marketplace, they had already integrated their inventory across their stores and warehouses. Now, was the time to pilot with Fynd Store.

The goal was to optimize the sales of high-volume styles from stores. Specifically, they had a number of evergreen styles which always has overwhelming demand. Once Fynd Store was introduced, it acted not only as an enabler in selling these styles but also improved the in-store customer experience.

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Problem

Red Chief had inventory in silos for each stock point—EBOs, Warehouse, Factory Outlets, and Franchisee Stores. The current process of serving orders in case of cut sizes was broken. Stores had to check other stores which housed this inventory, ask them to outward the required stock, and then subsequently inward it in their POS (point-of-sale) systems. Ultimately, the ordering store would get this stock from the other store via local transport and would then finally get delivered to the customer via regional transport.

This involved a lot of manual work and, thus, inefficiencies. Nor was this a scalable solution. Reliance on local transport was a big problem which led to poor customer service. Most importantly, Red Chief store employees were already occupied with the high influx of in-store shoppers. They would lose sales most of the time and no one from the brand would notice. With such a large array of high throughput stores, Red Chief realized it is time to adopt omnichannel.

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Solution

Save the Sale

We integrated the inventory of all Red Chief stores pan-India, and began operations with Fynd Store. The objective for stores was to save the sale by placing orders on the Fynd Store app in case of cut sizes of the top 40 core styles. So every time a store ran out of a particular size, he would find the nearest fulfillment store, and place an order for the customer.

While the brand already started generating 3-7% business with the ‘save-the-sale’ solution within 6 months of starting Fynd Store, there was more to come with a new usecase yet to be discovered.

Fynd Store as a POS

Red Chief realized early in its journey that it needed to find ways to liquidate slow-moving inventory. While the target audience of Red Chief is very price-conscious, a little difference in margin or discount here and there could make the store lose a potential customer for life.

Slow-moving styles were also a challenge because the brand produces a huge amount of styles year-on-year, and it needed a way to liquidate these styles. Hence, came the usecase of Fynd Store as a POS. Slow-moving styles had a new way to sell—offer competitive pricing with extra discounts on these styles. The primary aim of the store employee was to sell from the store, but if the customer was price sensitive and would leave the store without purchase, the store person could now offer an additional 5-10% discount to the customer and ensure he does not lose on a sale.

“Fynd has redefined the way we do business. Not only has our revenue seen an impact, but our customer service has also gone to another level. Fynd offers virtually everything to ensure we succeed—a dedicated account manager, operations support team, data analytics and insights on sales and inventory, offers, and growth plans. We look forward to more heights with Fynd”

- Vipul Pandey,

Omnichannel Manager, Red Chief

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Fynd Store as a digital catalog

Red Chief has a sister brand, Furo, which sells sports footwear and merchandise. While Red Chief stores were already using Fynd Store as a digital catalog to upsell, they now had an opportunity to sell Furo merchandise from their stores and vice versa. Cross-selling of inventory led to up to a 21% increase in Fynd Store business of top-performing stores.

With the save-the-sales, POS usecase, and digital catalogs, Fynd Store virtually turned into ecommerce channel for stores.

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Implementation

Upskilling the tech education of employees

Store staff are hard-wired to sell only what’s physically available at their store. Adopting Fynd Store (our in-store omnichannel product) always faces some friction, especially when the staff is not well acquainted with new technologies. Continuous upskilling of store staff by Fynd CSMs (Customer Service Managers) on order placing, app features vs benefits, order fulfillment, etc., has led to continuously increased adoption by stores.
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Customer-first approach

Stores had a very clear approach to providing excellent customer service. Fynd Store became an enabler to the mandate of providing excellent customer service. Orders were fulfilled and delivered timely in remote parts of India, seamless returns and refunds, multiple payment methods, personalized guidance by Fynd CSMs led to an increased customer trust, resulting in repeat purchases.
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Outbound sales during the pandemic

Stores needed to pivot their sales approach during the pandemic. With Fynd Store, the store could make real-time digital catalogs and share them with their customers. Every store could make their own collection which was like a unique website for them. Here’s one of the collections being shared on WhatsApp

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Road Ahead

With 150+ Red Chief stores pan-India on Fynd Store, the brand continues to generate an additional 15-21% of business via Fynd Store. Customer experience has been enhanced with faster deliveries, easy returns, and refunds. While the adoption of save-the-sale, new-age POS, and real-time digital catalogs has been a hit, we ask what’s next?

Well, in 2022, we'll be looking at adding self-checkouts at stores.