LK Bennett: Styling a digital B2C commerce experience that’s a beautiful fit for a luxury fashion brand
LK Bennett delivers on its customer promise
When upscale fashion company LK Bennett Fashion Limited looked to position its luxury brand for growth online, it knew the customer experience was everything. To create a distinctive online customer experience that’s in line with the service that customers expect in its physical stores, the high-end retail fashion label selected the SAP Commerce Cloud solution.
increase in sales from its Web site in the last two years.
uplift in Web site conversion rate.
dip in online returns.
To find the right balance between providing an inspirational brand experience and ease of shopping with modern functionality, we moved our e-commerce operations to SAP Commerce Cloud.
Zoe Donovan
Digital and Marketing Director, LK Bennett Fashion Limited
The Challenge
Inspiring retail shoppers of luxury fashion with exceptional interactions online
As an upscale international fashion label with a uniquely British ethos, LK Bennett counts Catherine, Princess of Wales, among its many fans. The brand is known for harnessing vibrant prints, elegant shapes, and beautiful fabrics to curate wearable pieces designed and made to be loved forever. Defined by beautiful design and considered luxury, LK Bennett successfully blends a love of vintage eccentricity, functionality, and tradition.
When new owners acquired the company, they identified an underinvestment in its e-commerce Web site and technology. At the time, its IT team was focused on running the infrastructure rather than continually improving the customer experience. As a result, the company’s Web site had become dated and lacked key functionality expected by consumers. Prioritizing the customer experience as a key retail strategic focus, LK Bennett set to work on delivering exceptional customer interactions and looked for the right technology to help it delight and inspire online shoppers of upscale apparel.
With our e-commerce environment running on SAP Commerce Cloud, we can handle trade during high-traffic peaks and never have to worry about performance issues.
Zoe Donovan
Digital and Marketing Director, LK Bennett Fashion Limited
The Solution
Delighting customers with a smooth experience from browsing to checkout
To help achieve its goal of offering exceptional consumer interactions on its Web site, LK Bennett now relies on the comprehensive digital commerce functionality embedded in SAP Commerce Cloud. This includes workflow-based order management, product content management, and personalization tools. Aside from enabling a more intuitive customer experience and providing strong security certifications, moving to SAP Commerce Cloud also allows the fashion label to reshape its IT infrastructure in the cloud.
SAP Commerce Cloud enables integration with payment solutions, which allows LK Bennett to offer a number of modern payment options, as Zoe Donovan, digital and marketing director at LK Bennett explains. “By ensuring it’s easy for our customers to browse our collections and by providing easy payment options that they trust, such as Apple Pay and Klarna, we’ve removed unnecessary friction from the e-commerce experience.”
Adopting a retail omnichannel mindset, the team at LK Bennett chose to integrate SAP Commerce Cloud with the SAP Emarsys Customer Engagement platform. Using these solutions enables the luxury fashion brand to personalize marketing tactics to build trust and drive more sales.
By moving to the cloud, we reduced the time and cost needed to maintain our IT infrastructure, giving our IT team more time to focus on business initiatives that put the customer first.
Zoe Donovan
Digital and Marketing Director, LK Bennett Fashion Limited
The Result
Inspiring customers continuously through more personalized experiences
LK Bennett’s move to SAP Commerce Cloud gives the luxury fashion brand a strong footing to deliver the right balance between brand experience and ease of retail shopping. Engaging consumers with large and inspirational imagery that is easy to scroll makes online browsing a pleasure. In addition to enhancing the look and feel of its site, LK Bennett made complex steps as straightforward as possible with operational improvements in delivery options, wish list functionality, and the checkout experience. Since launching its revamped e-commerce Web site, the company has seen its conversion rate lift by 20%, with sales generated from its online channels up by 35% over the past two years.
To engage customers directly with highly personalized retail omnichannel journeys, LK Bennett can now link its site to Facebook and Google networks thanks to integration between SAP Commerce Cloud and SAP Emarsys Customer Engagement. The company uses the social networks for lead-generation activities to build new relationships online. It also manages negative match lists to help avoid marketing to the same person twice.
And thanks to a reduced investment in hardware, software, and associated maintenance costs, LK Bennett has fashioned significant savings in the total cost of ownership of its IT environment.
With the absence of ongoing technical implementation requirements, our cloud-based e-commerce infrastructure allows us to spend our time and resources on customer experience enhancements. We can now release new features more regularly without downtime.
Zoe Donovan
Digital and Marketing Director,LK Bennett Fashion Limited
SAP helps LK Bennett run better
Key business outcomes and benefits
- Created the right balance between brand experience and easy retail shopping journeys for its luxury collections
- Established a modern look and feel with large and easy-to-scroll inspirational imagery
- Improved delivery and return options, wish list functionality, and the checkout experience
- Enabled data-driven insights to inform continuous improvement activities
- Realized significant savings in the total cost of ownership of its IT environment by moving to the cloud
Featured solutions and services
- SAP Commerce Cloud provides a trusted e-commerce foundation that is both modular and extendable to support innovation at scale.
- SAP Emarsys Customer Engagement empowers marketers to drive customer lifetime value by delivering real-time, omnichannel experiences.
About LK Bennett
Founded in 1990, LK Bennett is a British accessible luxury brand with a strong cultural heritage. Offering a unique selection of feminine clothing, shoes, and accessories for customers around the world, the brand creates distinctive and luxury pieces. Known for exceptional quality, LK Bennett’s collections are defined by their authentic design, expert craftsmanship, and signature detailing.
| Industry | Region | Company Size |
|---|---|---|
| Retail | London, United Kingdom | ~400 employees |
About LK Bennett
Founded in 1990, LK Bennett is a British accessible luxury brand with a strong cultural heritage. Offering a unique selection of feminine clothing, shoes, and accessories for customers around the world, the brand creates distinctive and luxury pieces. Known for exceptional quality, LK Bennett’s collections are defined by their authentic design, expert craftsmanship, and signature detailing.
| Industry | Region | Company Size |
|---|---|---|
| Retail | London, United Kingdom | ~400 employees |