Boutique tea retailer T2 Tea are stockinstore’s newest client after a recent discussion with Adairs offered the solution to one of the company’s biggest tech challenges.
stockinstore was the first step in unifying commerce
T2 Tea tells why implementing stockinstore was “the first proper step” in bridging the gap between online and stores.
“It always felt like a war of us vs. them, when it came to stores and e-commerce,” says Rohan Penman who, since joining T2 just over 18 months ago, has been focused on creating a unified commerce omnichannel for the company.
“I haven’t got an agenda other than to make everything consistent and available and focussed on the customer,” Penman adds.A solution that can be customized
This customer-focus was a crucial consideration when onboarding the new functionality and T2 Tea wanted to ensure they could customize their service to include Temporarily Out Of Stock as well as offering Online Exclusives and Digital Gift Cards.
Following a brief but illuminating discussion with former colleagues at Adairs about the ease of integration, ample customization and speed of bringing stockinstore on board, the T2 CIO set in motion the first stage of what he terms an ‘omni-tech-capable’ approach.
Penman’s ‘omni-tech-capable’ approach is to consider “whether the solution is retail fit, scalable for capacity and future features, customer-focused i.e. simple to use and adopt for either a consumer or a retailer [and] capable of global deployment”.
stockinstore’s Find in Store solution ticked every box
Penman was keen to find out how stockinstore’s technology would work with T2’s existing global Salesforce Commerce Cloud site, and whether they could initially test the Find in Store functionality in the local Australian market.
Three (3) weeks after the initial meeting with stockinstore in July. T2’s Australian customers were using the new feature to find products in their nearest stores.
T2 Tea are now global with stockinstore
Just two (2) weeks later, T2 added stockinstore to their New Zealand website and their UK, USA and Singapore sites are set to receive the new functionality before Christmas. A win for tea-lovers across the globe!
With stockinstore’s Find in Store functionality, T2 Tea now have the visibility and cohesion they were looking for to ensure fewer lost sales, better planning and a more unified approach across the company – locally, overseas, online and in-store.
Penman is particularly interested in the reporting that will uncover more about their customers.
It [stockinstore’s reporting suite] gives you kind of the ‘air-gap’ of what occurs that no-one really knows about because you can see what they’re looking for and they are missing. So there might be an opportunity next year to produce another 3,000 units of [certain products] because they’re constantly searched for and they all ran out and there were three weeks before Christmas.
It’s interesting when you start being able to put some numbers behind stuff like that – on missed opportunity – it’s all gut-instinct and hearsay otherwise.
Penman is passionate about the role of technology in brand building and delivering exceptional customer experiences. “Technology is now the strongest marketing solution you have [and] the most likely first point of contact to your existing and new customer base”. A website is really “just one big giant shop front – so that’s how it has to behave.”
T2 are excited about the value it will add to their customers and their digital experience as they approach Christmas.
It’s going to become even more important as we head into Christmas because… as with any e-commerce business it fulfils out of a DC, [and] once that stock disappears out of there you can’t buy it online anymore. So, therefore [with stockinstore] – people can now find it.
Find out more about T2: t2tea.com
About stockinstore®
stockinstore was launched in 2016 as a way for retailers to tell online shoppers which stores nearby have the item they’re looking for. Since its launch, this ground-breaking technology has continued to bridge the gap between online and in-store; and gives retailers valuable insights into customer demand for products across their store network. To learn more about stockinstore and join a growing list of retailers like Sheike, Triumph, Kookai, Intersport, Nique, Billini, Toyworld, Bags to Go and Tentword, who are all using stockinstore to improve their retail businesses, visit https://www.stockinstore.com
