Accent Group enhances ecommerce experiences and builds brand loyalty

Challenge

Delivering scalability, efficiency, and increased profit

Accent Group is the business brain behind many performance and lifestyle footwear and clothing brands globally. It operates more than 750 stores and 40 online platforms and many of its brands – such as Vans, Skechers, Dr. Martens, Timberland, and Platypus – are global success stories in their own right.

With the pandemic kickstarting increased online sales, the group needed to launch an ecommerce platform for new brands faster than ever before and deliver the personalized online experiences that today’s customers expect. However, their existing on-premises platform and point-to-point integration didn’t provide the required speed, efficiency, or scalability needed to deliver this. With every new website, the team had to integrate all systems, including App21 (a specialized ERP system connecting inventory, customer data, products, and orders) and Adobe Commerce from scratch. This was incredibly labor-intensive for the development team and resulted in a slow time to market.

Additionally, their existing ecommerce platform was outdated and didn’t offer features such as loyalty programs or cross-selling capabilities. Without these key functionalities, Accent Group risked damaging customer loyalty and losing revenue to its competition.

The group needed to re-platform its websites quickly and efficiently and deploy the latest technology to deliver more personalized, customer-centric features and functionality.

Objectives

Building market competitiveness and customer loyalty

To achieve this Accent Group needed to:

• Deliver market-leading digital customer experiences, making it seamless, consistent, fun, and easy to browse and buy.
• Launch competitive loyalty programs to increase customer retention and revenue.
• Grow its distribution network efficiently by onboarding new brands and improving the distribution of brands already under the Accent umbrella.
• Create an integration layer to stand the test of time and maximize reuse to enable faster time to market.
• Ensure success at speed by accessing market-leading skills and technology.

Solution

Driving company scalability with future-proof integration and API reuse

Accent Group selected MuleSoft for their new API strategy and foundational architecture, and engaged MuleSoft Professional Services to deliver the implementation. With Accent Group’s limited in-house skill set and the need to move quickly, MuleSoft Professional Services provided expertise and scale to the team, and helped them understand and benefit from new technologies from day one.

Accent Group selected Platypus, a new ecommerce brand, as the first project in the strategic website replatforming program. Featuring the migration of its core Adobe Commerce platform into the cloud by leveraging MuleSoft to build foundational APIs. MuleSoft Professional Services used APIs to connect all of the backend systems, surfacing product, customer, order, and inventory data. These APIs were built for the landmark Platypus launch and designed for reuse for future ecommerce replatforming projects.

Accent Group continues to work with MuleSoft Professional Services to plan the next phase of its ambitious expansion plans. “The integration layer is key to all the capabilities that are on offer these days, for both digital and bricks and mortar,” explained Tim Greenstein, Accent Group’s Chief Information Officer.

“I took great comfort that I could use MuleSoft Professional Services’ expertise when we didn’t have the skillset in-house and will continue to do so in the future. It has saved us 4 months implementing this project, and the best practice foundations and reusable APIs we have in place will deliver speed and efficiency for all subsequent ecommerce projects.”

Tim Greenstein
Accent Group’s Chief information officer.

With an API-led architecture established, optimized, and future-proofed, Accent capitalized on the success of the Platypus project by reusing APIs to quickly replatform its biggest brands, including Skechers and Vans. MuleSoft enables Accent to deliver enhanced functionality to enhance the customer experience, such as size and fit guides, click and collect, delivery options, intelligent search, two-step checkout, rating and reviews, and brand-specific loyalty programs.

As a loyalty program member, customers earn points with each purchase to unlock exclusive rewards and discounts. MuleSoft connects Accent Group’s core ERP system, App21, with the ecommerce system for accurate tracking of customer purchase history, and loyalty points. Designed to incentivize purchasing and increase brand loyalty, customers can easily view their balance and redeem their points in real time when they log into the website.

In addition, MuleSoft enables real-time inventory look-up at both a store and warehouse level by surfacing inventory data from App21 and exposing it to the ecommerce platform. So whether customers are purchasing online or via click-and-collect, they can see accurate stock availability at every location.

Results

Accelerating time to market and enhancing customer experience

Accent Group’s API-led architecture, developed in partnership with MuleSoft, has created a template for fast and efficient ecommerce projects, driving revenues throughout its family of brands by transforming the customer experience. Substantial benefits have been unlocked faster, with MuleSoft implemented 4 months ahead of schedule by using MuleSoft Professional Services, rather than acquiring in-house skills.

After the Platypus foundational project, subsequent ecommerce projects were completed 83% faster with API reuse. With these efficiencies, Accent Group can double the number of brands it launches each year and introduce new ecommerce platforms such as Shopify for specific brands.

Improved functionality of the ecommerce sites has improved the customer experience and conversion, with a 30% increase in loyalty program participants, a 30% increase in average time on site, contributing to a 100% increase in gross profit.