Skechers Digital Strategy Focuses on Re-Platforming, D2C, Loyalty

Need to Know 

• After upgrading POS systems and overhauling its online store, Skechers saw massive growth in 2019, reporting a 23.1% increase in sales in Q4 alone.
• CFO John Vandermore says this is only the beginning for Skechers’ e-commerce business, with plans to re-platform and relaunch loyalty.
• The mega footwear brand plans to expand its online offerings worldwide and become a major direct-to-consumer presence.

Analysis

After a record year in 2019, Skechers is just getting started in the push to modernize its business and become an e-commerce giant. 

Starting with an updated retail experience and expanding into an enhanced e-commerce site, the footwear brand has shared that these improvements are just the beginning of a digital overhaul. 

After tripling the number of retail stores in the past five years, Skechers realized the need to digitize with more omnichannel solutions for their customers.

By switching to Aptos, a merchandising, commerce, customer and order management solutions system, Skechers was able to “improve the infrastructure and efficiency of our direct-to-consumer operations.” 

The new POS provides a single view of customers, products, and orders, which is designed to help the Skechers team offer informed customer service, faster checkouts and personalized customer experiences. 

Additionally, Skechers has overhauled its online store and announced plans to re-platform from one online vendor to another. By switching to a new online sales platform, Skechers plans to improve its omnichannel experience, which includes re-launching a beta version of its loyalty program and further improving its POS system. These announcements all came on a recent earnings call.

Skechers CFO John Vandermore affirms that this is only the beginning. “It’s very early stages for us in the e-commerce business. The economics are still very attractive to us. They look very good to us relative to our overall retail performance,” he said in a recent earnings call. 

In 2019, Skechers reported $5.22 billion in sales, and Q4 alone reported an improvement of 23.1% from the year prior. And the online, direct-to-consumer business can be credited for a 60.3% increase in U.S. sales. 

With these strong growth metrics, Skechers will be taking learnings from US upgrades and expanding worldwide. 

“We have invested a lot of money over the past couple of years and are re-platforming and getting things ready for a new major launch, including our lead program,” says COO David Weinburg. “On top of that, we are going to use that as a prototype to take around the world. We don’t have direct-to-consumer online e-commerce in every subsidiary in the world, but we plan on it in the next year to be online and direct-to-consumer in every country in the world.”

Not saying goodbye to brick-and-mortar just yet, Skechers is also planning to open 75 to 85 new stores in its warehouse format by the end of 2020.