Joe Browns was founded in 1998 as a mail order clothing business that has now grown to a large online lifestyle brand with an increasing physical retail presence. Inspired by a group of friends’ collective spirit of being “fun, spontaneous and free”, these foundations have been retained and instilled into the culture, staff, products, website, catalog and stores.
We sat down with Darren Abbott, Finance Director at Joe Browns Ltd, to ask why AFD Software was selected to manage customer contact data accuracy.
“AFD Software has provided Joe Browns Ltd with address validation for the past fifteen years. Ultimately, communication and orders fail if errors are entered or information is omitted. We like working relationships to be built around people and results – AFD have the right people and have delivered the results we have wanted.
Customer recruitment is essential for the business and we have seen a large shift in how customers choose to buy from us. Back in 2002, 30% of orders were placed online. This has since tripled with orders placed through the website currently accounting for 90% of sales.
Our catalogues provide an opportunity to not only showcase our products but to communicate our culture and resonate with those who read it. We send around 8 million catalogues each year; to maximise the chance people will read them and hopefully convert into sales, they need to be delivered to the intended address. Similarly, customers shopping online expect a smooth checkout process and for their delivery information to be fast and easy to enter.
Magento 2 was selected as the new e-commerce platform for our website; when we began exploring the functionality we wanted and the data validation elements required, AFD were fastest to respond. We knew there would be an integration piece and their teams’ experience and speed of development further increased our confidence that we had selected the right partner for providing contact data quality solutions.”