Tom Tailor Builds Ecommerce Experience in Just 3 Months That Out Earns Brick-and-Mortar by 10%

Success is never a bad thing. But sometimes it can hide transformational opportunities.

The Southeastern Europe (SEE) branch of German lifestyle fashion brand Tom Tailor has been wildly successful over the years. Serving customers the latest styles at local brick-and-mortar stores, Tom Tailor SEE was so successful the brand didn’t even feel the need to sell its products online.

That changed when the coronavirus pandemic hit. As was the case with many brick-and-mortar retailers, Tom Tailor was suddenly in need of an ecommerce store to serve regional customers.

Unfortunately, the platform Tom Tailor was using to manage its digital presence just wasn’t suited for ecommerce. In fact, Tom Tailor’s employees couldn’t even do basic content updates without help from the implementing agency, let alone managing a multitude of SKUs that each require its own imagery plus product and pricing information. 

After looking at seven different proposals, Tom Tailor chose to work with Slovenian digital agency Vareo to catapult its commerce journey. 

Vareo’s proposal involved a full-scale migration of the SEE site to Progress® Sitefinity®. Sitefinity made managing content seamless, plus the platform’s tight integration with Ucommerce brought in powerful ecommerce capabilities. With this approach, Tom Tailor could manage the entire ecommerce experience from one platform while minimizing IT overhead costs.

“With other ecommerce systems, you always run into the problem of content management,” said Gorazd Planinc, Martech Solution Architect and Owner, Vareo. “You wind up constantly moving between systems to run different parts of the business.” 

“Sitefinity with the Ucommerce integration enabled us to do everything from one place—this is real power when it comes to selling products,” he added.  

Another key advantage of Sitefinity was the ease with which it could connect to other key systems. This was particularly important since there were different systems at both the corporate and regional level that were vital to streamlining and automating commerce processes.

For example, each SEE location uses its own ERP system to store data about products and stock levels. The main German headquarters also has an image CDN, which was accessed by the product information management (PIM) to create product catalogs. Sitefinity enables seamless integration of all these systems to deliver a more engaging, dynamic shopping experience.

After just 10 days of being live, the first SEE Tom Tailor site is out earning the average brick-and-mortar store on a daily basis. It generates an extra 10% in revenue, without incurring any additional marketing and promotion expenses.

Being able to manage content and commerce under a single roof has enabled Tom Tailor to fully maximize SEO, with their SEO score jumping to 71%. It has also been a tremendous cost saver, with Sitefinity eliminating many of the headaches of building scalable ecommerce experiences. 

Thanks to the user-friendly content editing experience, Tom Tailor’s non-technical marketing team can take full control of their site, without relying on assistance from a partner. This has enabled Tom Tailor to reduce their agency retainer expenses by 70% and focus on more strategic commerce initiatives. And on top of that, Tom Tailor was able to adapt quickly to the rapidly changing business environment, going live with the first regional site in less than 3 months—50% faster than offers from other vendors.

“With Sitefinity and Ucommerce, we were able to deliver the online shopping experience that our customers didn’t even know they wanted. And by filling that gap, we’ve also been able to create a new revenue stream that enables us to grow our brand in new markets and reach new audiences,” said Aljosa Bajrovic, General Manager, Tom Tailor SEE. “

About Tom Tailor

The Tom Tailor is an internationally operating fashion company that offers casual wear in the medium price segment. Fashionable accessories as well as home textiles complement the product portfolio. Learn more at www.tom-tailor.store. 

 About Vareo

Vareo is dedicated to helping modern businesses make the right marketing technology investments and get more business value from their martech stack.  Learn more at www.en.vareo.si.