Challenge:
Loss of multiple sales channels and increase in digital competition due to COVID-19
In addition to generating sales through their online store, Skinnydip sells their products in over 200 concessions in the UK. With the pandemic abruptly halting brick-and-mortar shopping, their sales growth on these channels disappeared entirely. Like most brands who faced a similar loss, the brand has shifted their focus to the online experience as their sole channel for traffic and sales.
The shift to online experiences was an opportunity and a threat for the brand with an increase in new traffic for online shopping during the pandemic. Skinnydip is one of many brands that’ve completely pivoted to online-only experiences, now competing against a sea of digitally native brands with strong footholds in the online sphere.
Balancing growing traffic with manual merchandising and minimal resources
Having a small team made it much harder to keep up with growing customer demand. Their manual merchandising strategy put an even greater strain on their ability to foster product discovery, convert new site traffic, and nurture new shoppers into loyal customers. Additionally, if a new product was launched, Skinnydip had no visibility into how those products fit into other categories. This meant that products with great sales potential would often end up in the wrong places and not visible to the customer, causing the brand to miss out on the crucial initial sales window.
Skinnydip needed a solution to eliminate an extremely laborious process with limited resources and traffic on the rise. They also needed to eliminate guesswork that often led to human error and adopt a merchandising strategy that uses data to drive decisions.
