Brands launch mobile apps to ease supply chain issues
While mobile apps have been around for decades, the pandemic era has sparked a surge in their popularity among fashion brands and retailers.
Over the past three months, brands such as Muji, Grailed and Kenny Flowers, as well as retail platform NewStore, have focused on mobile apps. Their reasons are manifold, but a common thread running through these new apps is that they are targeting loyal customers and being used as a way to communicate inventory at a time when supply chain issues make it paramount.
According to Kenny Haisfield, founder of his eponymous resort clothing brand, the company’s app, which launched on Sunday, took about six months to develop. In addition to serving as a shopping channel, the app can immediately notify customers when a desired product is back in stock and when brand new collections are available.
“Last year we were constantly selling specific products,” Haisfield said, citing ongoing supply chain and inventory issues in the industry. “We couldn’t always put things back in stock right away, and people were running out. The app, and push notifications in particular, help us reward loyal customers by letting them know when something is back in stock. »
As for brand SMS subscribers, Haisfield said its app downloaders, of which there were several hundred in the first three days, are often among the company’s most loyal regular customers. More than a third of Kenny Haisfield’s customers are subscribed to SMS messaging and most are repeat customers. A big difference with an app is that a push notification can be sent to thousands of customers at once, essentially for free, while traditional SMS marketing charges for the message.
Stephan Schambach, founder and CEO of retail platform NewStore, said that over the past month, more than 30 brands have already started using mobile apps through NewStore’s app platform, which was officially launched on Wednesday. They include Rebecca Taylor, Golden Goose, Scotch & Soda and Moose Knuckles. Schambach said brands that launched an app through the company during the three-month pilot period tripled their the site’s engagement rate and quadrupled their lifetime customer value, on average. Most are launching an app to tackle inventory issues, improve the physical experience by including in-store features, or increase loyalty with top customers, Schambach said.
The results are particularly encouraging, depending on the target age demographic of the brand in question.
“Brands that cater to the Instagram generation have had the most success [with apps], we found,” said Thijs van Schadewijk, general manager of consumer apps at NewStore. A brand targeting a younger audience, which van Schadewijk declined to name, saw 25% of its sales quickly migrate to the app.
But mobile apps, at least the good ones, don’t come cheap. Unless you’re a giant company like Nike that can afford to build an entire app and its associated ecosystem from scratch in-house, you’ll need to hire an outside partner, such as NewStore. Kenny Flowers worked with a third-party developer, Tapcart, and spent $5,000 to $10,000 upfront to get the app up and running, not including monthly fees to keep it up to date. NewStore declined to share the price of its app.
“Nike has billions of dollars to play with,” Schambach said. “They can create their own app with no problem. Most brands can’t do that.
