Lucky Brand LLC is focused on weaving together its online and offline operations.
The denim and apparel retailer, which operates 250 stores, has a growing ecommerce business that accounts for roughly 30% of its total sales online. However, the distinction between its online and offline operations is fuzzy given that Lucky’s stores fulfill up to 45% of its online orders, says Michael Relich, Lucky’s chief operating officer.
The retailer also aims to drive shoppers to connect the dots between its online and offline operations. Driving those actions has proven lucrative as consumers who shop across the brand’s website and stores have a lifetime value that’s three times that of a single-channel shopper, Relich says.
While those results are strong, there’s more work to be done. That’s why Lucky is making a concerted push to fine-tune its omnichannel strategy, including overhauling one of its two distribution centers to handle both online and in-store inventory. It is also launching a portal that pulls in operational data from various systems, such as its ecommerce platform and warehouse management system to provide better operational visibility to its orders.
Lucky has long operated two U.S.-based distribution centers. The facilities, which are based in California and Kentucky, respectively, have each fulfilled a mix of wholesale, store and online orders.
But since the start of the year, Lucky is in the process of overhauling the California facility to focus on its wholesale operations, while the Kentucky distribution center will soon house its store and ecommerce inventory. Having a combined distribution center will makes it operations more efficient because it will reduce split shipments and make inventory forecasting easier, Relich says. For example, if a store is tapped to fulfill an online order, Lucky not only pays to ship that product from its warehouse to its store, but now pays the additional cost of shipping it from the store to the customer’s home.
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