Casual Male Retail Group Inc. launched its first European e-commerce site last week, and within two weeks will have 12 sites operating in six countries. It’s part of a plan to use the web to gather information about European tastes, before the multi-channel retailer makes the larger investment in opening stores in Europe, says Dennis Hernreich, executive vice president, chief operating officer and chief financial officer.
“In the U.S. we grew through the store channel first, here it will be direct then store,” Hernreich says. “The direct channel is like a scout. It helps you size up the market and then you plop in stores once you have a good idea what the market’s like.”
Understanding the European consumer is the first step. “We have to know not just the total dollars, but what is the style in Europe, what styles do they show a propensity for that we don’t have in the U.S., what sizes are important in Europe that are not in the U.S. This is very important information,” he says.
The retailer uses data management and reporting tools from Oco Inc., both in the U.S. and Europe, to track down to the size, color and style level for each item the quantities it is selling through its web sites and catalogs. The Oco business intelligence tools supplement the Ecometry Commerce Suite from Escalate Retail that underpins the retailer’s sites.
Oco was able to deliver its software to Casual Male’s specifications in six weeks in 2004 when the retailer implemented the technology in the U.S., a very short development time for business intelligence software vendors, Hernreich says. The retailer is using the same database infrastructure and reports to gather data from the European sites, he says.
The company is in the process of deploying a site for each of its brands—Casual Male and Rochester Big & Tall Clothing—in six countries: the United Kingdom, Spain, Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands. The company has one store in Europe, a Rochester store in London.
While Casual Male uses technology from Ecometry and Oco for its web and catalog business, it uses a separate system from JDA Software Group Inc. to manage its store operations. Maintaining separate systems is inefficient, Hernreich says, and the company is in the processing pulling together the direct and store systems, a project scheduled to be completed next summer. “We’ll have one inventory and one buying process for all our demand,” he says.
Casual Male is No. 254 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide.
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