Red Chief adds an additional 15-21% store sales with Skyber Store OS

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 skyber.io marketplace, they had already integrated their inventory across their stores and warehouses. Now, was the time to pilot with Skyber Store OS.

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 Skyber Store OS 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.

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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 Skyber Store OS. The objective for stores was to save the sale by placing orders on the Skyber Store OS 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 Skyber Store OS, there was more to come with a new usecase yet to be discovered.

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Skyber Store OS 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 Skyber Store OS 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.

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“Skyber 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. Skyber 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 Skyber”

- Vipul Pandey,

Omnichannel Manager, Red Chief

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Skyber Store OS as a digital catalog

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Red Chief has a sister brand, Furo, which sells sports footwear and merchandise. While Red Chief stores were already using Skyber Store OS 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 Skyber Store OS business of top-performing stores.

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

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Implementation

Upscaling the tech education of employees

Store staff are hard-wired to sell only what’s physically available at their store. Adopting Skyber Store OS (our in-store omnichannel product) always faces some friction, especially when the staff is not well acquainted with new technologies. Continuous upscaling of store staff by Skyber CSMs (Customer Service Managers) on order placing, app features vs benefits, order fulfilment, 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. Skyber Store OS 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 Skyber 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 Skyber Store OS, 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 Skyber Store OS, the brand continues to generate an additional 15-21% of business via Skyber Store OS. 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.

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