Eyewear retailer achieves omnichannel vision.
Devlyn used Magento Commerce to sell glasses online through multiple channels and increased mobile conversion by over 271%.
+163%
Conversions (YoY)
Products:
Results
163% YoY increase in conversions
271% growth in mobile conversions
25% increase in session duration
Devlyn Optical saw an omnichannel opportunity
Founded in 1936 by Dr. Frank J. Devlyn, Devlyn Optical is a family-owned, multinational optical retailer with operations in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, and the USA. Today, Devlyn is one of the largest eyeglass retailers in Latin America, operating over 1,200 retail locations. They have nearly 5,000 employees who work across four distinguished retail brands: Devlyn, Vetro, Inmoda, and Optimart. In 2012, they were running a highly successful brick-and-mortar business, but recognized some pain points and great opportunities. No retailer in their market was offering an e-commerce solution for eyeglasses, so there was an opportunity to expand their leadership position in the market.
Devlyn had two problems: stock availability and shallow inventory. “Our stores offered on average 580 SKUs with one or two pieces of inventory per SKU. Yet in our network we have 25,000 SKUs with available inventory that we were not offering our customers,” said Andrew Devlyn, Director of Innovation at Devlyn Group. For example, a customer in Store A might like a certain pair of glasses, but want them in red. It was difficult for Devlyn to “save that sale” even if Store B had the right glasses in the right color.
What if they could expose all their physical store inventory to their digital channel? How much would that increase conversion? And what if their store associates could also access that inventory, and offer a true “endless aisle” experience to customers? How much could this “save the sale” process increase their revenue? To do this, Devlyn would need a system to unify their inventory, route any order to the best location, and provide the tools to turn their stores into mini-distribution centers. They chose Magento Commerce.
“When we started with this online effort, we truly did not know what we were doing. Our customers had a different message online versus when they went into one of our stores. That’s when we landed with Magento, and everything started to click.”
Andrew Devlyn
Director of Innovation, Devlyn Group
A customer-first omnichannel online strategy
The company laid the foundation for its ambitious growth strategy by launching its first online store on Magento Open Source in 2013. Seeing customers’ tremendous response to their omnichannel e-commerce offering, Devlyn upgraded to Magento Commerce in 2015 to bring even more product SKUs online, take advantage of a more robust performance, extend their large customer loyalty program online, and more easily manage multiple customer groups — including employees, who were eligible for a discount program. When it came time to take Devlyn’s e-commerce operations to the next level of omnichannel engagement, the obvious choice was to upgrade to Magento Commerce 2.
Devlyn needed a high-performance, full-suite solution to support their long-term vision of delivering the best customer experience for prescription glasses. “The difference that Magento brings is its flexibility,” said Devlyn. They decided to take advantage of Magento Order Management, the solution that would bring the company’s omnichannel vision into focus. With Order Management, they could offer a triple threat for fulfillment: Ship-from-Store, Ship-to-Store, and Click and Collect.
The company created a virtual pool of inventory that could then be sold in any channel: online, or by an associate in any of their stores. “To service our customers, Ship-from-Store was obvious,” said Devlyn. Now the customer who wanted those glasses in a different color can choose from thousands of options, instead of just what the store has in stock. “We believe we have a very compelling offer that is truly more omnichannel than any of our competition.”
The order management features revolutionized Devlyn’s order processing. Through the power of the Magento Commerce sourcing engine, orders are now routed to the closest store, while minimizing other costs like split shipments. Once the order hits the store, Order Management makes it easy for the associate to pick, pack, and ship the frames to the lab for processing. This is all done efficiently and without time-consuming conversations with the corporate office. Lastly, the flexibility of Magento Order Management enabled Devlyn to integrate the pick, pack, and ship processing with their existing Point of Sale solution, instead of deploying another tool.
Amazing omnichannel results — fast
From purchase to deployment in less than six months, Devlyn achieved their omnichannel vision: to be flexible, and to grow, evolve, and innovate over time. Devlyn implemented their new solution in a lightning fast time to market. Instead of tinkering with their ERP — trying to fit a round peg in a square hole — or spending ages deploying a massive, disruptive e-commerce platform only to be met with complexities of customization, they chose Magento Commerce and Order Management, and got it right the first time.
Devlyn experiences some incredible results, including a 163 percent increase in online conversion, and a 271 percent increase in mobile conversion. Their online conversion skyrocketed because of two factors:
- By enabling Devlyn to expose their store inventory to online consumers, Magento Commerce turned “out of stock” situations into transactions.
- The upgrade to Magento Commerce dramatically enhanced the consumer experience. “The updated checkout flow was a lot easier, so we saw an uptick in conversions on mobile and desktop,” said Devlyn.
Customers clearly enjoy using the website, as session duration grew 25 percent. Devlyn was thrilled with the numbers, describing them as “crazy.”
By giving store associate better access to the full set of inventory, Devlyn experienced an amazing 200% increase in “save the sale” orders. Since associates had full access to inventory in the warehouse as well as other stores, they never let a sale walk out the door.
The bottom line, said Andrew Devlyn, is that “omnichannel makes customers loyal.