Insights of the endless aisle from the company behind Peak Performance

IC Group is a retailer that owns a number of premium fashion brands including Peak Performance, Tiger of Sweden, and By Malene Birger, operating across European countries including the UK, Germany, France, and the Nordics.  

In 2014 IC Group partnered with Adyen foromnichannelpayments, and soon after implemented endless aisle, enabling their shoppers to buy items from the full online inventory while they are in store.

We spoke to Henri Legentil, IT omnichannel consultant at IC Group, to see what retail brands can learn from their experience. 

IC Group uses the Adyen platform as its single payments solution for both ecommerce and point of sale, resulting in a number of benefits.

Key among these is the ability to maintain a single integration point for ecommerce and endless aisle transactions, which simplifies implementation and maintenance costs.

In addition, endless aisle enables in-store sales even when the products are not in stock, through access to the online inventory on an iPad operated by store staff that has a direct serial connection to a mobilePOS paymentsterminal.

On the one hand, this improves the customer experience, as the shopper has the option to buy the item they like even if it is not in stock. And on the other hand, this has a direct positive impact on revenue

In order to make sure individual stores are invested in providing the endless aisle experience to shoppers, IC Group assigns the sale to the store. 

The implementation of endless aisle, reinforced with the store getting credit for the sale, is now having a positive impact on the brand delivering a seamless experience across channels – critical in today’s world where shopper journeys often begin on mobile. 

“For most consumers, the journey starts online. If you are not able to offer the same availability of styles in store and online, you are just going to have really confused consumers.” – Henri Legentil

The implementation of endless aisle has exceeded expectations across the board, but particularly so for smaller and regional stores. In fact, the rollout has resulted in increased sales by a couple of percentage points in larger stores and significantly higher in regional stores. 

For smaller stores, the ability to present the entire available assortment can present a challenge. Endless aisle provides an elegant solution, improving the shopper experience and recovering potentially lost sales. 

In stores distant from one another, the results may in part be due to the fact it is not easy for shoppers to visit the next store in order to pick up what they want. 

“If an item is not available in your store but is available in a neighboring one, you may just redirect your consumers to that store. Though when there are no other stores nearby, endless aisle is the perfect way to satisfy your consumers.” – Henri Legentil

Endless aisle helps staff to present more detailed information to the customers about the products in store. It is now possible to present customers with the products’ marketing descriptions, compositions, and up sell and cross sell recommendations, which are all available within a few clicks. 

“Having access to online inventory and product information is a big plus. It empowers the store staff to share more knowledge about their garments. In that way, it’s also an up sell and cross-sell tool that helps them sell more online as well as offline.” – Henri Legentil

Implementation of the endless aisle has provided a wide range of benefits to IC Group, but it is only one of many potential shopper journeys offered by retailers today. In the future, IC Group plans to use Adyen’s single solution to enable more shopper journeys, such as buy online, return in store. 

Furthermore, the company also has plans to leverage the data it is collecting from the implementation. For example, endless aisle provides valuable data on buying preferences of in-store shoppers, in terms of items, styles, and so on. In the future, IC Group is considering leveraging this data to optimize its purchasing and streamline its in-store product ranges.