Forrester Research has estimated that online retail sales will grow at an average of 11.5% per year over the next five years in Western Europe. By 2023, 21% of non-grocery retail sales will be online, up from 13% in 2017. This represents a huge opportunity for brands to quickly build their online sales revenues if they can get their digital strategy right. The problem is that many brands are challenged when it comes to joining the dots in their customer journey due to a mix of technologies and systems that don’t always play nice with each other. This problem becomes even more amplified when these brands try and expand into additional global markets, with different languages, currencies, cultures and legal requirements.
Back in 2013, Havaianas (pronounced ah-vai-yah-nas) was one of the world’s most iconic and successful brands who was celebrated for its strong Brazilian flavour of colour, vibrancy and positivity, all wrapped up in its secret rubber recipe, which makes its flip-flops buttery-soft, flexible and durable. The company was trying to establish itself within the European marketplace when it began its engagement with Kooomo’s digital commerce platform via sister company Zerogrey, who became their digital team to manage its eshops from end to end throughout Europe.

Havaianas began trading online in Europe via a third party but it was struggling with the complexities of selling a seasonal brand into multiple countries with a variety of languages and currencies. This was coupled with the company’s inability to access vital information from across the business such as order history, KPIs, inventory and returns data, which created a host of challenges such as:

■ Loss of sales leading to poor customer experience due to inefficient inventory control and warehouse management tools

■ Limited geotargeting capabilities

■ General operational inefficiencies

■ Difficulties future proofing the business In addition, as Havaianas has higher sales during the summer months, their eshops need to be able to scale well as average daily orders can jump up to 10 times from winter to peak season.

Havaianas brought all of its siloed ecommerce systems under one roof by moving its European eshops onto Kooomo’s digital commerce platform. Now, through a single dashboard, the company’s entire supply chain and customer journey for each of its eshops across Europe was clearly visible. This transformed the business as data and insights were instantly available allowing the team to set KPIs and manage the business at a strategic level.
The Kooomo platform offers key features and functionality that address their challenges head on:

INTERNATIONALISATION
As Kooomo was built to operate across Europe, it can handle multiple languages, currencies and vat rates with ease allowing Havaianas to swiftly enter any number of new European countries to support its expansion plans.

GEOTARGETING
By providing Havaianas with the ability to customise campaigns for multiple markets, with localisms, seasonal scheduling and culturally balanced language, visuals, and payment options, the company can deliver a personal touch, which has earned early success as it expands into new territories.

FUTURE PROOFING
As eshops are an ever-evolving marketplace, it’s functionality needs to keep pace with innovations within the retail industry and consumer expectations. With Kooomo’s ongoing platform development and through its partner network, Havaianas has, and continue, to incorporate that latest and most innovative technologies to further its business growth, such as Paypal, Olapic and Ve.

AGILITY
The platform was developed to handle small to enterprise levels of trading online so scaling is seamless while moving from a low season average daily order of 100 to the high season’s 1000 orders a day and back again.