Tech Transformation Podcast: AllSaints' James Reid on Endless Engagement Opportunities with Mobile Apps

It's not exactly easy to be a shepherd of innovation in retail these days. Attention spans are shorter, competition is fiercer, and consumers expect to be met where they’re at – with personalization, seamlessness of experience, and product performance now seen as givens. 

With over two decades of experience spanning technology, retail, and luxury sectors, James Reid, chief innovation officer at iconic fashion brand AllSaints has a front-row seat for these challenges and opportunities. 

In this episode of Tech Transformation, James shares his experiences of what it takes to truly drive change in the retail and consumer goods space. From discussing the development and success of the AllSaints app –  and tapping into the ultra-engaged consumers that this channel provides – to navigating the challenges of maintaining a unified commerce approach while disseminating and adapting the brand identity across diverse markets, James provides valuable insights into the evolving landscape of retail and the importance of customer-centric innovation.

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Excerpts

On customer-centricity: “The challenge is making sure that what you're doing is focused in the right way. We're an organization that's very clearly focused on the customer. You'll hear our CEO talk about a phraseology of the customer is the boss for us. So what is it we're introducing? What's the impact that's going to have on the customer? How do we make sure that that's as seamless as we can? But obviously internally, you've got to make sure that it's efficient and profitable as well. It's got to work. It's got to not add a whole load of workload internally.” 

On inclusivity: "We're really lucky as a brand. AllSaints is very inclusive in terms of the customer base that we work with. It does stretch to all ages. We are pretty much 50-50 split between women's wear and men's wear as well – which is quite rare from a fashion perspective – which gives us a whole different challenge. It's great you've got this huge customer base to talk to. It's also a challenge because you've got this huge customer base to talk to. You haven't got a niche you're focusing on. Do you see what I mean? So making sure that you've got that focus of what the customer is looking to achieve and how they want to work is really important."

On app-based engagement: “Commercially [the app] has a big benefit. I mean, the conversion rate that we see through an app is significantly higher, which is obviously great from our perspective. Again, bear in mind that small caveat that it tends to be a very engaged customer who does that. So, you'd expect it to be a bit higher, but we've seen that go far beyond that. We like to try and bring the customer into us as a brand. AllSaints is a brand that gets under your skin. And we have a huge consumer base who come back again and again to us as we develop the product that we do. So that continued engagement and that continued tie-in with the brand we find is very important to that customer group.” 

On continuous improvement: “We want to do that geographic expansion in the right way so that we're meeting a customer's requirements in each of those geographies rather than It's an English version of something just rolled out that looks the same wherever you go. There needs to be some differentiation: How do you look at things from a personalization point of view and how do you keep the app current with a customer's requirement? It's a constant process.” 

On rewarding engagement: “One of the things that we're considering getting into now is – as we go into the usual mid-season sales cycle that you would expect us to do as a fashion brand – is start providing early access to customers, but it would be through the app so you start guiding customers into that method as almost a default. We're starting to look at that sort of thing. It's very early days in terms of the exploration, and it's a balance between guiding a customer in that direction and not wanting to accidentally alienate anybody who maybe would prefer not to go down that route.” 

On omnichannel versus unified commerce: “I think where I look at the difference with a unified approach as opposed to the omnichannel that we've all been talking about for 25 years is that the Omnichannel as a principle it's certainly in my head. It's very much ‘you've got multiple different things and you're trying to glue them together and there's a degree of overlap and there's a degree of interrelation, but it's there's always a bit hampered because you're trying, from a technology point of view, to make multiple things work in broadly the same way. Where we want to get to from a unified point of view is I want it to be very transparent to the customer. I want it to be invisible to a consumer. They can't tell that there's a difference between the three things.”

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