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The Challenges

To handle the volume from the growing international demand, the PAIGE team decided to outsource their entire digital presence to an external vendor that handled several key aspects of the business including e-commerce and customer care for both domestic and international customers. However, there were several limitations with this arrangement. PAIGE’s Head of E-commerce, Kristina Barclay, was unable to choose her own vendors to work with and had to go through the external partner to make any business decision. The PAIGE team required greater flexibility to operate and Kristina knew they wouldn’t be able to scale their cross-border efforts with the current partner.

Most concerning was that the existing vendor was providing a sub-par customer experience on the site, especially for international shoppers. Excessively long shipping times, unclear delivery windows, and insufficient customer support to handle all the complaints highlighted the lack of control over improving the user experience and the PAIGE team didn’t have sufficient visibility into the operations of the website.

Zivkov realized that the situation with the legacy vendor was not sustainable and hindering growth. She knew they couldn’t scale international operations fast enough to meet the increasing demands from customers and fans in growing markets such as the U.K., Germany, France, Canada, and Australia.

To ensure their growth in the coming years, they decided to part paths with their previous vendor and bring all of e-commerce in-house. Thus, the PAIGE team hired a VP of Technology, Andrew Gerberi, who led the charge in replatforming the e-commerce site on Shopify. They also decided to review their options and make sure they were working with all the right partners. For international, they needed a partner who heavily invested in technology and could grow with them. This is when they found Flow.

Problem

• Legacy vendor with no transparency providing a poor customer experience
• Not enough resources to meet international demand
• Cross-dock model added cost to international shipping and delays in order delivery

Solution

• Customizable experiences for each country, including checkout page, display, and shipping options
• Direct shipping to the end customer, lowering overall cost and improving delivery times
• Direct access to Flow tech team for seamless integration expertise

We saw long lead times with international customer service issues with our previous partner and I knew we needed a better solution. Since working with Flow, we have significantly reduced international customer complaints by eliminating a middle man warehouse and being able to ship directly with Flow’s help.

– Kristina Barclay, E-Commerce Operations Director

The Solution

Localized Experiences

PAIGE needed to tailor the different customer experiences to each market and region. Flow’s Console allowed the PAIGE team to customize the experience for each country at all the different touch points in the customer journey. For Canadian shoppers, as an example, PAIGE decided to round prices to end with .95 and they offer free express shipping on orders over CA$500. In contrast, PAIGE leverages Flow’s platform to round product prices so that they end in .99 GBP. Additionally, the U.K. experience offers customers the ability to choose whether they want to pay duties and taxes upfront at checkout or if they prefer to remit taxes later upon order delivery.

Flow provides options to the customer allowing them to pay upfront for duty on their order or upon delivery. Customs documentation can easily be found along with tracking information within the customer service portal in Flow console. The customization offered by Flow’s platform is allowing PAIGE to provide nuanced offerings in each region depending on customer preferences. Allowing customers the option for how they pay duties and taxes and offering different thresholds for free shipping in different markets is just the beginning.

Hubless Shipping

Flow’s technology enables PAIGE to streamline their international logistics by directly shipping to the end customer. This direct international shipping model eliminated the need for the order to pass through a regional hub or a cross dock, which improves shipping times and allows PAIGE to communicate accurate delivery windows to their customers.

Before using Flow’s platform, the cross-dock setup that was in place was costly and created delays. Flow’s hubless model not only increases the speed of delivery, but by leveraging Flow’s Logistics module the PAIGE team can now manage their customs documentation, set localized shipping tiers by country, and manage order tracking. This was a huge improvement for the brand, and consequently, customer satisfaction and retention immediately improved. Using Flow’s technology, PAIGE can now manage their international shipping operations and logistics on their own and create a better customer experience as a result.

Built for Integration

Flow helped PAIGE implement a custom integration with full backend support. For PAIGE, this platform extensibility was critical. For each decision, Flow presented the PAIGE tech team with multiple options that matched PAIGE’s needs.

It was clear from the start that Flow was the right partner. The PAIGE team felt that Flow’s vision was compatible with their own. Additionally, PAIGE found that, similar to their brand, Flow also approached tech development with an emphasis on future-proofing the business. Flow’s team worked closely with PAIGE to explore all the best options for integration so that the brand could make the right decision for the business now and for the future.

Technical Expertise

PAIGE knew from the first call that Flow had the technical expertise to help them. The tech team at PAIGE was quickly put in touch with Flow engineers on the very first call and the two teams worked side-by-side throughout the
implementation. The direct contact with Flow’s dev team and the continuity working with the same engineers throughout the project made for a smooth onboarding process and seamless integration of the technologies. The transparency of the Flow team and the open communication lines instilled trust between the two companies and gave the PAIGE developers confidence that they were working with the most reliable and collaborative partner to get the best solution up and running.

With Flow, we found a partner who we can work collaboratively with. Not only were our visions compatible, but also the way Flow develops their technology to prepare for the future is very similar to ours.

– Andrew Gerberi, VP Technology