Patagonia - Kevin Churchill (The art and science of merchandising)
Patagonia Stats:
• $400m total. Wholesaler & Retailer & eRetailer
• $85m eRetail
Notes:
• Merchants & Merchandisers are stewards of the Brand
• Online Merchandising is a business person with an online lens
• You can certainly make the merchant smarter with data, but seasoned veterans often abandon data in deference to their gut.
• 55% art, 45% science (from poll)
• Must maintain the emotional connection to customers
• Machine analytics for cross-merchandising won out against the best Patagonia merchandisers for up/cross sell in a head to head test.
• Use LivePerson. Chat helps significantly in conversion. Tried to have creative look to chat, but failed miserably in testing. Went back to standard chat interface from LivePerson
• Test, Test, Test. Couldn't stop talking about how testing proved many ideas wrong that Patagonia thought were the right thing to do.
• Through checkout, keep the customer focused and push them through conversation. Keep it simple and don't cross sell, cross promote, etc.
• In merchandising, 20% of knowledge about the customer and their behavior is light years ahead of what retailers know about their customers. Measure, measure, measure.
Patagonia Stats:
• $400m total. Wholesaler & Retailer & eRetailer
• $85m eRetail
Notes:
• Merchants & Merchandisers are stewards of the Brand
• Online Merchandising is a business person with an online lens
• You can certainly make the merchant smarter with data, but seasoned veterans often abandon data in deference to their gut.
• 55% art, 45% science (from poll)
• Must maintain the emotional connection to customers
• Machine analytics for cross-merchandising won out against the best Patagonia merchandisers for up/cross sell in a head to head test.
• Use LivePerson. Chat helps significantly in conversion. Tried to have creative look to chat, but failed miserably in testing. Went back to standard chat interface from LivePerson
• Test, Test, Test. Couldn't stop talking about how testing proved many ideas wrong that Patagonia thought were the right thing to do.
• Through checkout, keep the customer focused and push them through conversation. Keep it simple and don't cross sell, cross promote, etc.
• In merchandising, 20% of knowledge about the customer and their behavior is light years ahead of what retailers know about their customers. Measure, measure, measure.