Combined revenues of the 4 markets I managed are in the close range of 400m EUR – the key channels being:
A large Direct-To-Consumer business with a SOB bigger than 50% – covering – besides eCOM – 150 owned and 200 franchised mono branded stores with roughly 2300 employee.
250 shop-in-shops with an average size between 80 and 150 SQM of which the majority are run as a consignment business model – in essence a semi retail business where we maintain control over sales, merchandising, inventory, VM and the sales staff.
Own eCOM, incubated and developed into a highly profitable and fast growing channel in Turkey.
Multi-brand sports, lifestyle and fashion distribution – over 450 customers with more than 1.500 doors.
Licensed Football and B2B / Institutional business.
The key strategic pillars designed and executed I will now explain in more detail:
Comprehensive Distribution and Range segmentation
Identifying and classifying all relevant channels, and customers/doors (profiling 1500 doors in order to categorize them as per key service and brand standards and segment them into a consumer profile driven distribution matrix – from sports speciality all the way to fashion boutiques).- Product range differentiation – segmenting categories and concepts and building assortments to map into the classified distribution / channel and customers.
Transiting to category led mono-brand retailing – developing and executing a comprehensive consumer driven category classification covering over 150 stores – dropping on average from 10 to 5 categories per store and providing a much sharper and category specific range offer.- Building a comprehensive 3 year plan – identifying immediate opportunities via new channels and productivity gains while also accounting for short term revenue losses and considering transition periods – where necessary – to safeguard the brand objectives and revenue targets.
- Achieving internal and customer buy-in – covering strong direction and guidance from the top, continuous internal communication and extensive interaction with customers with regards to agreeing on the segmentation and executing of the plans.
- Adjusting and mutually agreeing on new contractual and performance frameworks with customers.
- Reorganization of the the brand function and introduction of a strong collaboration model between sales and brands. In order to be category let and able to mandate assortments we organized the adidas brand function into BU and up-skilled capabilities. It was also critical to redraw completely the GTM and interaction model between the sales, retail and brand functions – enabling them to work hand-in-hand through the entire planning and execution cycle.
The overall results surpassed our expectation – we have been able to clearly differentiate our product offering according to consumer profile and clarified the brand positioning within the retail/digital distribution – overall achieving every year double digit revenue growth and improving margins while minimizing cannibalization and developing the adidas and Reebok brands in new channels, position new concepts in the fashion and lifestyle distribution, gain credibility with retailers and score with consumers as measured by the NPS.
Develop eCOM / digital sales channels
- Setting up our own eCOM sites for adidas and Reebok, developing business in digital channels of our multi-brand customers, with pureplayers and through strategic partnerships.
- The development of the own eCOM business will be covered in detail on the page “Market Place Management: Business Development”
Incubation of Omni-channel connectivity for the own retail network – building the functionalities C&C, return to store, ship from store and endless aisle. Going forward this is planned to extend to the Franchisee network as well.
Besides the technical connectivity it has been important to utilize the physical touch-points (brick&mortar stores), endorsements and influencers (social media) and others opportunities (e.g. shopping bags) to promote and create awareness the eCOM store and vise versa – providing the consumer with a combined brick&mortar / digital experience and maximizing cross-channel opportunities within the mono-brand eco system.
Professionalizing consumer services and improving consumer retail experience – the focus has been on 2 key components:
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Centralizing and professionalizing management of all consumer services and requests – from order inquiries, return handling to providing information about the brands, products and launches. Consumers are serviced via single point of contact for all inquiries in the form of a designated call center (Turkcell Global Bilgi) with clearly defined service levels.
– Collecting, segmenting data and acting upon consumer feedback captured at retail and eCOM through a matrix of digitally enabled tools located in our stores as well as a mystery shopper program exercised across multiple channels. The data is consistently analyzed cross-functionally and action prioritized in areas like staff training, merchandising and availability, in-store coms and experience, after sales service – just to mention a few.