Member Article

Church’s Shoes puts best foot forward with omnichannel solution from Dedagroup Stealth

International, luxury footwear brand, Church’s Shoes, has underpinned its international retail value chain with an omnichannel solution from Dedagroup Stealth, the company dedicated to fashion and luxury retail, and part of Dedagroup.

From a small family-run workshop set up in Northampton in 1873, the heritage of the premium footwear brand, which prides itself on creating high quality shoes that are made to last, has seen it grow into an international brand with a global footprint.

Church’s store estate now spans stores in over global territories, including the UK, Italy, Singapore, Hong Kong – with its first store totally dedicated to women’s collections launched in the heart of London’s luxury shopping district on New Bond Street in 2011.

As a growing international brand, operating in multiple territories and across multiple sales channels, Church’s Shoes recognised the need to integrate its systems to give a unified view of its customers – from the channels they shop in, to their buying journeys and purchasing habits – combined with a single view of stock, whether it was in the central warehouse, in-store or across its ecommerce platforms.

Replacing its disparate, out-dated legacy systems with Stealth®, a scalable omnichannel solution from Dedagroup Stealth, Church’s Shoes could leverage single stock pool capabilities and a single view of the customer on an international scale, in real-time. This allowed the footwear brand to enhance customer experience, by personalising in-store encounters and having greater access to available stock through one platform, to meet the high levels of service expected from its discerning customer base in order to increase conversions.

Hamun Shah, CFO at Church’s Shoes, commented: “Over its 150-year history, Church’s Shoes has always been at the forefront of innovation – whether it was bringing new production process into shoe-making, wholesaling internationally or driving vertical integration through the launch of its own stores. And, as such, the decision to drive forward with our ambitious project to reinvigorate our retail IT systems didn’t faze us.”

“We knew that the integrated solution from Dedagroup Stealth would bring together all our ecommerce, in-store and manufacturing systems, to enable us to deliver enhanced customer service to drive even better customer experience and, operationally, real-time reporting and a single stock pool,” he continued.

Luca Tonello, Sales Manager at Dedagroup Stealth, commented: “Today’s luxury shoppers, more than any other consumer, expect seamless retail encounters, with highly personalised and immersive, experience-rich shopping journeys. This means forward-thinking retailers, such as Church’s Shoes, recognise the need to underpin their businesses with the function and form of an integrated system; one that can deliver a 360 degree view of the customer, overlaid with real-time stock information, so that at any moment, and in any channel, they can better meet their customers’ needs. And that’s just what our solution has afforded Church’s Shoes.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tim Barton .