CRM in Practice: My Flat In London

Perhaps the only industry more fickle than the technology sector is the world of fashion – so it’s perhaps entirely appropriate that one of the most established software as a service (SaaS) advocates should be a fashion house.

My Flat In London is an in international chain specialising in luxury handbags and accessories. “We have a brand based on tradition and on European aristocracy,” explains company president Todd Haedrich. “It’s about where the world has been and reflects where it is going now. We create a line of products that can get you anywhere at anytime.

“We are sold worldwide through 500 outlets, some specialist stores and some retailers. We need to know what’s going on at any time. We need to see what’s shipping. I need to know what is in my store in New York. Whether it’s me when I’m travelling or one of our global reps, anyone can access our system and get a view. It's critical to our business that we can get access to our data no matter where we are, and that our sales team can enter orders directly from shows across the globe."

My Flat in London had been using QuickBooks initially, but outgrew this. “The fashion business is complex,” says Haedrich. “You are manufacturing globally and invoicing globally. You need to establish a business that is growing as you want it to grow. We needed one perspective for the whole business. We were using things like Excel and Access, a whole bunch of stuff that didn’t talk to one another and didn’t translate.

“These were not the tools we needed to grow our business, as none of the packages talked to each other, and there was no central database. All of our data had to get shifted into Excel spreadsheets—we were lucky if the information was 50 percent accurate at any moment. That meant we could wake up one morning and realize we had produced 500 black bags when we should have produced 500 pink ones."

As a replacement technology, the company considered traditional on premises packages aimed at small businesses such as Microsoft's CRM but deceided that these would have needed expensive custom configuration. Instead the company elected to deploy a hosted solution from NetSuite that would provide a global reach and meet customer management as well as ERP and logistics needs.

“We were looking for a comprehensive way to manage our customers and our business. It has to do with the silos of an organization and being able to have a viewpoint of the customer. We work on fairly long time frames in terms of managing customers. If we can have as much knowledge about them [as possible], it allows us to service them more effectively and in the long run make more money, because we actually know what they're buying and can look at what else might augment what they already have.

“It enables me to understand who that customer is, what the customer has ordered, and what the customer hasn't ordered. It's the management of sales, as well as customer service. Knowing the customer means maximizing customer profitability. Seeing a customer's transactions provides better cross- and upsell opportunities.”

“We had information all over the place, in Act and in Quickbooks. We needed to take all those different applications and bring the information in them together. We were trying to be as virtual as possible. I want to use a warehouse and a factory where they are best suited. I don’t want to open up my own factory so we need an internal and external support infrastructure. NetSuite has enabled us to hire people, but not IT staff. What NetSuite has enabled us to do is to be more efficient.”

As well as the customer management benefits, tying sales and inventory data together has enabled My Flat in London to produce a 120 percent increase in order flow, moving from incoming order to shipped product. Real-time inventory tracking flags up out-of-stocks and suggest alternative before customers place their order which also results in increased customer satisfaction.

"When a customer contacts us we can see what they've bought, and look at notes on previous conversations. This not only enables better service, but also allows My Flat in London to exploit new sales opportunities. We can see what customers have bought in the past, and how much they've bought, which lets us determine what other products or collections to suggest," concludes Haedrich.

My Flat In London was founded in 2002 by Jan Haedrich. It aims to evoke “the cosmopolitan, jet-set, luxury lifestyle of film and popstars and aspired to by many”. The company’s products are sold through 450 speciality stores worldwide, including Nordstrom, Fred Segal and Stanley Korshak.