- Hello and welcome to Community Chats.
I'm Aley Hammer,
and today we're interviewing Paul Erskine,
the Head of Digital and Data Delivery at Strandbags.
Paul welcome to the show.
Over the last two years, the world has definitely changed,
so can you share with us
how your customer's expectations have changed
and how you guys at Strandbags
are actually supporting these new expectations?
- For sure. Thank you Aley.
So yeah, over the last two years,
I think one of the big changes is the expectation
around levels of service across all channels
from in-store, online,
all the way through until the order is delivered.
The customer really wants a personalized experience,
they want to know how they've engaged with the brand.
Um, and yeah the basically the way we've tried
to accommodate that is we've built in some
personalization into our new website.
So that is something that we're really focused on.
And we're also working on the build
of a new data platform
to really understand our customers in the best way.
- Well I must say I personally love Strandbags
and can attest to the fact that your website is so great
and provides a very seamless experience to your customers.
So with all the changes to the digital experience,
what has the impact been to both your online
and in-store presence?
- So yeah through the changes,
since we've deployed the new website,
the customers have responded really well.
So in parallel to that,
we've launched a new in-store experience.
And that, that in-store experiences has really
elevated the brand.
So as we built the new website,
we wanted to, we wanted to respond to that,
and we wanted the website to really be a show case
in the same way the new stores are.
And that's the way it truly worked out.
We've also focused on,
focused on personalization as I mentioned,
we've put in a product called High Conversion,
and in the backend that's powered by AWS Personalize.
And since we've gone live,
we've seen around 19% of our online sales
have been driven through the
product recommendation sections of the new website
so that, as expected that has been really successful.
- Well as a shopaholic myself,
you know, whenever you get the recommendations,
it's so helpful and I'm often finding myself,
you know, being up-sold.
So it's so great that you're factoring all this in.
And what I want to know is
what role does AWS technology actually play in all this?
And what impact does it have on your business?
- We have a, an AWS middleware
that was built as part of our new, web builds.
We have our core systems that sit in-house
and we have a new website on Shopify,
but in between those two systems,
we have an AWS middleware
and that's where we will look at
what stock do we have in each store?
What are the, what's the closest store to the customer?
So a lot of our sales result
in click and collect orders being placed.
So we want to work out, okay which stores have the stock?
What's the closest store to the customer?
So that we can provide them with the best options.
We're also looking at how do we
provide enhanced delivery options?
So how do we reduce the time it takes us
to get the product to the customer.
So that's a big focus for 2022,
looking at building on that middleware platform
and looking at how do we provide the customer
with enhanced options.
We're also in the process of building out
a new data platform.
So look building a data lake,
building a data warehouse, all on AWS,
so from the data warehouse
where we're looking at using a Redshift.
We've been monitoring the developments of Redshift
over the last couple of years,
we're really impressed with where that's at the moment.
Once we have the data in the data lake
we'll be looking to bring in AWS SageMaker,
and we use that to really derive machine learning insights,
to power different use cases across the business.
And we're also doing a proof of concept of AWS QuickSight,
we're looking at choosing the best a BI tool
to build our reporting platform on,
and AWS QuickSight is part of that evaluation.
So again really looking at tapping into the power of AWS
to get things up and running quickly
through using that proven technology
where we're confident we'll see some,
some really good results.
- Well the data lake you're building
will provide so many insights,
and I cannot wait to watch your journey
and continue working with you guys.
So on this actually,
what does the future look like for Strandbags?
- We're looking to really become a data powered business.
So by building out the data lake, the data warehouse,
the key objective of that initiative
is to give each department
so from merchandise, retail, supply chain,
our property team, finance team.
We want to give each team in the Strandbag's business,
the ability to track performance against targets,
but also to derive some key insights
so one of the key things we'll be looking at
is where is our inventory?
What do we have in the DC?
What's being delivered?
What's in store?
what's on the shelf?
And really use data to drive each part of the business.
So we're excited about
progressing this journey quickly
and through using AWS,
we're really confident we can get some good results
and really build on that partnership over time.
- Paul it's been so cool to watch your journey,
particularly over the last two years,
when I think consumers like myself,
you know, who are stuck in lockdown,
are definitely becoming more demanding
and their expectations have absolutely changed.
It's really cool that you're looking at all these options
with delivery and recommendation engine.
So thank you so much for coming on the show
and talking about your journey.
And if anyone has any questions for Strandbags,
please pop them in the comment section below,
and we'll get back to you.
Thank you so much.
- Thank you.