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~ Ranpak ~

with utterly unlimited resources that care less for what products offline awareness in that area. ‘When we open an offline shop,
they sell as long as they can sell them. On the other hand, there we see an online spike from that area as well. Conversion
are specialised grocers, much like us. We, as a family business, rates go up, as well as the number of site visits and more.
have to grow with our own resources. That means growth is That way, an offline store is a great marketing tool for our
realised, but it is done so in a secured manner. We work based online store as well. It is why we work with one marketing
on our own strengths and identity, just as a grocer focuses on team which focuses on both our online and offline marketing
his. What differentiates us from supermarkets and lots of other strategies. Just imagine you are in a store, trying to benefit
grocers, is that we are very, very focused on offering a product or from a discount you saw online, but which only works online.
collection that satisfies all of our Omoda-customers’ wishes. We This is frustrating. That’s another reason to treat your mix of
could start to sell some well-performing brands tomorrow if we on- and offline sales channels as one.’
would like to. However, we are convinced that these shoes do
not fit our brand name and do not match the brand identity we Customer experience in a changing market
are striving for. Our founders still decide whether we will start Due to the rise of online commerce, almost all brick-and-
selling a specific brand or type of shoe or not. They see all of mortar stores in all kinds of markets have seen a decline in
them. With that, the identity of the company is guaranteed. This visitor numbers and sales. ‘In our market, we have to deal
is why we recently added “passion for shoes” to the brand name.’ with numerous players who want to benefit from the same
audience. Two important parties are general marketplaces
Target audience such as Zalando and Amazon and the traditional, specialised
As Omoda focuses on a specialised identity, it also creates a shoe-selling companies like ourselves. With e-commerce, a
profile for what kinds of customers the company will attract. third party has become increasingly more important: suppliers
Baan: ‘Women are very important to our business. Firstly, of brands more often directly look to sell to the customer.
women between 25-45 who aim to dress in a fashionable We believe that the share of online sales will increase to 50%,
manner are part of our core audience. These women account for which is hard for the offline market to deal with.’
approximately 60% of all sales. A lot of women inspire – or even At the same time, consumer spending has changed according
buy – their husbands’ or children’s shoes as well. That means that to Baan: ‘People used to spend their money on products.
if these women can identify themselves with the Omoda brand, These days, diners, food and events such as short holidays,
they will suggest it to their relatives as well, which results in city-trips and festivals make up a bigger share of people’s
more sales in our collections for both men and children.’ disposable income. As the market for shoes is quite steady,
this can be a dangerous cocktail to deal with. Our main
A single multichannel approach challenge is to counter the stagnation of visitor-growth to
As of 2007, Omoda has an online shop as well. The company our offline stores. This involves thinking about how you can
has therefore integrated its offline and online business. still have offline added value for your customers in both
When asking what kind of multichannel strategy the shoe service and inspiration, despite the online growth. We put a
retailer is following, Baan answers that multichannel is a lot of effort in the way our stores look, to keep them up to
misleading term. ‘That is because it assumes online and offline date to counter the decline of visitors as much as possible. At
are two separate things. Of course, the practice of selling is the same time, your online service needs to be top notch so
a little different, but it is not the case that we approach our visitors who see you online will come into the store as well.
customers in a different way online and offline.’ We try to do that by providing our customers with fashion-
From this, we could conclude that Omoda is using a single inspiration in blogs, on social media and through emails.
multichannel approach for its online and offline customers. Doing that continuously, will make customers keep an eye out
Baan elaborates, ‘Look at it from this perspective: Voice for us as a brand, visiting our stores.’
search is a very up-and-coming thing. Will we see it as
something completely new in the coming years? Most likely As Baan already stated, it does not matter if a customer
not, as we will treat it like a part of e-commerce. Looking decides to place an order online or buy directly from the
at what customers do, we see that they find their inspiration store. ‘It is your service that causes customers to become
online, but might buy offline as they want to try our products recurring customers in the future. For us, it is harder to
first. The opposite happens too, as it can be very pleasing to realise that online consumers expect the delivery to be easy
get your products delivered to your doorstep, although you and free of charge. Home delivery has to feel like a present
have tried them in our stores in the first place. In our case, you receive and in case a product gets returned, that should
due to the way that customers have mixed the use of our be a completely hassle-free experience too.’ Baan cannot
channels, we cannot treat them as separated sales units. Our emphasise enough that this feeling has to match the feeling
channels inform each other, even though the way to approach when consumers want to look and buy offline. ‘This is why
a customer might differ.’ we pack our online orders with great care, in designed boxes
that reinforce that experience. When shipping our accessories,
To illustrate this with an example, Baan highlights that the we pack them in custom-designed dust bags.. It makes the
opening of a new brick-and-mortar store not only creates unpacking experience fun and creates satisfied customers.’

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