Moss Bros suits up for unified commerce to increase sales

Almost every retailer is making a serious effort to implement a consistent cross-channel shopper experience.

But less well understood is how payments fit into this picture. In this case study, Moss Bros, the leading UK menswear brand, shows how a unified commerceapproach to payments can drive real business results.

Established in 1851, Moss Bros has clothed government ministers, military officers, and many other distinguished people over a history of more than 160 years.

In early 2013, the business embarked on an ambitious journey to expand its digital footprint and revenue both domestically in the UK, and internationally. 

Partnering with us, Moss Bros initially adopted our payments platform as a payment gateway and an acquirer in the UK to coincide with the launch of its new ecommerce site.

Soon after, it expanded the relationship to include mobile point of sale (mPOS) in a selection of its UK retail stores, and international ecommerce and mcommerce. 

The partnership resulted in a string of impressive results, including:

As well as these impressive figures, the partnership helps Moss Bros increase customer retention and drive word-of-mouth-fuelled growth through delivering a seamless payment experience to shoppers across online and in-store.

Established in 1851, Moss Bros is a leading formal menswear brand in the UK that has clothed government ministers, military officers, and many other distinguished people over a history of more than 160 years.

In early 2013, the business embarked on an ambitious journey to expand its digital footprint and revenue both domestically in the UK, and internationally, across multiple channels including desktop, mobile, and mobile point of sale (mPOS).

Moss Bros’ existing payment service provider couldn’t deliver the global reach and functionality to match its ambitions, so the business began searching for a new payments technology solution to accompany its website re-launch.

Ultimately, the key reason Moss Bros chose to partner with us was that our payment platform provided integrations with all potentially interesting localpayment methodsin international markets – giving Moss Bros the ability to offer local shoppers the payment options they know and trust.

Moss Bros initially adopted our payment platform as a payment gateway and an acquirer in the UK to coincide with the launch of its new ecommerce site. 

This rollout had an immediate impact on revenue, tripling the conversion rate across the website, and in the first year, Moss Bros saw a 209% growth in total online revenue in the UK.

Following the successful UK launch, the business embarked on an online-first international expansion strategy, launching ecommerce sites in Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Denmark, followed by an Australian site in early 2014.

To ensure maximum convenience for its customers, the Moss Bros collaborated with us to offer targeted local payment methods in relevant markets, for example, iDEAL in the Netherlands. 

Proving the effectiveness of this solution, within a few months of the launch around 6% of the sales were coming through its international ecommerce sites, and in the Netherlands, approximately two-thirds of Moss Bros’ current sales are now made through iDEAL. 

This highlights the business value of offering key local payment methods and local currencies in international markets.

In a further effort to increase conversion rates, Moss Bros collaborated with us to disable3D Securefor locally-issued cards in markets in which 3D Secure leads to increased abandonment at the checkout stage.

This resulted in an increase in conversions of up to 20% in some markets.

“For anomnichannel, multi-market offering such as the one we are developing with Moss Bros, a single payments solution with one backoffice that can be rolled out seamlessly across multiple markets, payment methods, and currencies is a real game changer. I’m extremely excited by the success our partnership has achieved so far, and look forward to building on it further as we develop our offering in new markets in Europe and North America.” - Neil Sansom, omnichannel Director at Moss Bros Group

Moss Bros also launched a mobile-optimized site in May 2013, supported by the implementation of one-click payments, a functionality which makes repeat purchases as fast and frictionless as possible for shoppers.

In just over a year, the site has quickly grown to the point that 10% of their online sales are now on mobile devices.

A particularly interesting aspect of Moss Bros’ unified commerce strategy is an initiative to roll out tablet-assistedPOS paymentsin its retail stores which has a number of benefits for customers and staff. 

If a customer sees a product that isn’t available in their size or is not stocked in that store, previously there would be a manual process where the item would need to be ordered from stock and delivered to the relevant store for the customer to pick up.

But besides the time investment, this situation carried risks in terms of missing an opportunity to deliver a consistent experience to the customer, and on a sales level, it also meant the customer may change their mind before completing the purchase.

Since rolling out the new solution, if an item is not in stock, customers can use a custom-made app on an in-store tablet equipped with the Adyen point-of-sale terminal (a Chip and PIN payment device) to pay for the product immediately and have it delivered either to their home, office, or even in the store they made the purchase from or from another more convenient store. 

Moss Bros is seeing promising results from this recent rollout to 10 stores in the UK, and is now incentivizing staff to make more sales on the app.

Following successful multi-market and multi-channel rollouts, Moss Bros is planning further international ecommerce expansion with our payment platform to France, Germany, and the US.