Since 2007, Orlebar Brown has redefined holiday style for men. Today, the brand makes everything you need to "Holiday Better," offering a wide range of stylish resort wear, including shirts, trousers, and footwear. Since 2018, Orlebar Brown has been part of the Chanel group, and has grown into a global brand, with over 50 direct stores and more than 250 additional locations in major cities and beautiful resorts around the world.
Orlebar Brown has always aimed at creating a seamless experience for their customers, whether they are shopping online or in-store. "Supporting our customers' shopping journey—which can begin at a store in Sydney, continue online from their home in New York, then end with a purchase from a store in St. Tropez—is always our priority," according to Jamie De Cesare, Chief Technology Officer at Orlebar Brown.
Jamie and his team had the ambition of creating a seamless and personalized shopping experience while being channel-agnostic. They needed a simplified technology solution that could fully integrate checkout and website datapoints, while also helping them to manage multiple currencies and taxes across all of their international stores and websites.
After switching to Shopify's unified commerce platform to meet these goals, Orlebar Brown has seen:
- 50% reduction in commerce technology ownership costs
- 66% increase in basket-to-checkout rate, with Shopify Payments
- 42% of customers identified as existing Shop Pay customers, removing friction at checkout
The Challenge: Costly operations and fragmented data
With a nearly even split between online and offline sales, Jamie understands the importance of a seamless shopping experience, which he believes is critical to generating recurring revenue. But prior to switching to Shopify, the brand faced challenges with a fragmented backend architecture, inhibiting their ability to achieve their full omnichannel vision.
With several integration challenges, the brand was facing complexities across their operations. One major issue stemmed from the reliance on multiple systems to feed into the point of sale (POS), while the website operated on a completely different platform. This disconnection led to variations of customer data, and without a single view of the customer, it was difficult to fully understand the customer and understand exactly what was going on in the business.
It was challenging for us to seamlessly integrate accurate customer data across various touchpoints, which impeded our ability to fully understand what improvements could be made in the business.
As a global brand with over 30% of sales made internationally, Orlebar Brown also faced the challenge of separately managing each country's legal entity, creating a complex web of technology and business structures to maintain. This setup made it time-consuming to update prices and show local currency in online storefronts manually.
Jamie knew something had to change. The team was in reactive mode, constantly firefighting technical issues instead of focusing on innovation and customer engagement. Building an extensive roster of developers wasn't feasible, and the time spent troubleshooting was draining resources that could have been invested in creating better customer journeys. He needed technology that was light, easy to adopt, and empowered staff across both digital and shop floor teams.
The energy put into getting systems to speak together could be used for improving customer journeys as opposed to fixing customer journeys.
The Solution: Unifying channels for a seamless experience
Implementation and Collaboration
Orlebar Brown partnered with Shopify Platinum Partner Tryzens Global to migrate from their previous commerce platform to Shopify. The implementation timeline aligned with Orlebar Brown's broader transformation goals, with the entire project spanning 12 months. The Shopify build itself took approximately six months from discovery to delivery, integrated within a larger business transformation initiative. Throughout the process, the Shopify team collaborated closely with Orlebar Brown, providing access to beta features and developing specific requirements that would later be rolled out across the platform for other retailers to benefit from.
Strategic Architecture for Growth
A primary reason the team chose to replatform to Shopify was "the ability of Shopify to provide a seamless omnichannel experience, both to the end user and to business users," says Jamie.
Beyond the unified experience, the team was drawn to Shopify's agility and cleaner digital architecture. This meant fewer integration problems and lower costs associated with fixing technical issues. As Jamie notes, "It's more proactive and innovative rather than reactive and firefighting." This shift in approach aligned perfectly with Orlebar Brown's strategic goal to reduce operational costs and redirect those resources into customer engagement.
Shopify's extensive ecosystem of apps was another crucial factor. They integrated OneStock for advanced order management capabilities, among other integrations, which helped them get to market quickly instead of needing to build everything from scratch. This meant that from a resource perspective, the team could focus on looking forward and driving growth rather than maintaining complex integrations.
Streamlining Global Operations and Payments
The move to Shopify drastically simplified Orlebar Brown's tech stack, freeing up time to focus on creating personalized customer experiences. With Shopify's ecosystem of easy-to-use apps, the team can now test and optimize iteratively, launching into new markets and channels with greater agility and less reliance on third-party integrators.
Orlebar Brown had been working with a payment gateway already, but the team felt that Shopify Payments was better integrated and easier to use, and enabled them to build the lean architecture they set out to build. Jamie highlights "Shopify Payments' multi-entity management made it easier for us to streamline processes, allowing us to build a lean architecture without worrying about multiple touch points and integrations." He adds how Payments "offered more to customers who were also more familiar with the platform. So that was a big win."
With the help of Shopify Markets, the team is managing multiple international storefronts from one platform, making global selling easier and faster. With localized pricing, languages, and payment methods, the online shopping experience is elevated for the brand's international customer-base. "As we aim to provide a tailored and personalized experience to our customers, Shopify Markets enables us to recognize them though our Shopify POS and access their purchase history. This allows us to customize their visit, fostering better conversations and building stronger relationships," says Jamie.
Elevating the In-Store Experience
While in store, Shopify POS provides employees with a user-friendly interface that streamlines the checkout process, and enables them to offer customers a seamless, high-end shopping experience with data at their fingertips. They can walk around the store with the customer, recommend items based on their preferences or previous purchases, and process payments on the spot.
With Shopify's unified approach to commerce, Orlebar Brown customers are recognized at any store globally with their complete purchase history visible. If a customer places an online order in London then visits the St. Tropez store, the team can deliver a tailored experience by suggesting items to complement their existing wardrobe.
Our teams on the shop floor are harnessing the power of having an omnichannel view on handheld POS. When a customer comes into our store and we can recognize who they are, we have their whole history there. That allows us to build a more meaningful relationship with the customer as they browse around our store.
The Results: A lean platform in service of the customer
Shopify's unified commerce platform helped Orlebar Brown achieve their lean architecture dream and deliver a true omnichannel experience. Jamie highlights, "We were able to remove excess technology that is now redundant because Shopify does it all for us. We no longer have to rely on developers, as many features and tools are part of the Shopify platform and ecosystem."
The brand has seen the positive impact of increased site speeds, combined with the streamlined checkout. As Jamie notes, "We are seeing a 66% increase of basket completion rates, and that is all due to just switching to Shopify." He adds that customer complaints about the checkout experience have "decreased to almost zero." Upon launching Shopify Payments, the team also identified that 42% of their customers were existing Shop Pay users. This facilitated a frictionless shopping experience, with returning customers able to checkout in one-click.
Upon launch we saw that 42 percent of our customers were already on Shop Pay, which is good because they were identified, their details were already there, they were stored, so it was a completely frictionless experience for them, which means that they can convert better and quicker.
By integrating the POS and website data into a unified system, the team has eliminated the need to update information across sites and price books, which simplifies deposit tracking and tax management. Savings like these combined with streamlined operations have contributed to monumental savings.
We're seeing a savings of about fifty percent in terms of running one system as opposed to two. It's seamless, it's easy to maintain, if there are any issues it's easy to resolve. This allows us to reinvest that money into driving a much better experience for the customer, and it also drives value for us. So it's a win-win situation.
Shopify POS is essential in bridging Orlebar Brown's online and offline channels, offering a unified view of inventory to minimize the risk of overselling or stockouts. The integration with OneStock enhances order management, increasing operational efficiency and customer satisfaction. The brand can now effectively track and organize stock across channels with real-time inventory levels, which is vital for their omnichannel strategy. Jamie notes, "If an item isn't physically in the store, we can easily fulfill it from the Shopify POS on an iPad, take payment and ship it to their hotel the next day. It's quicker, better, and offers more value than ever before." The same applies to the brand's website, where stock might not be available in the warehouse but exists in the store, making the product available online for purchase and fulfillment from the store.
Shopify's simplified backend, seamless integrations, and user-friendly interface enabled store representatives to concentrate more on customer engagement, and less on technology. Jamie notes how employees across the business can get more work done, in less time. The adoption of Shopify among in-store sales associates has been hugely positive, with the team fully embracing Shopify POS.
Store adoption of Shopify has been sensational; that's one of the biggest wins. If you have technology that is complicated to understand and use, then there will be resistance to adoption. That hasn't been the case with Shopify POS. People on the shop floor have been great champions of the technology and have helped drive its successful implementation.
Looking ahead
Jamie acknowledges that Orlebar Brown is still in the early stages of their Shopify journey, with plans to harness the platform's full potential. He says that "the objective of the next eighteen months is how do we drive value from a very robust and core platform and an app ecosystem that will help business users and customers alike." The team is working with Shopify Plus Certified App Partner Nosto to refine their personalization capabilities and create tailored experiences to customers through Shopify. This will empower sales associates to match customers with their online profiles, see products they’ve viewed and added to wish lists, as well as provide personalized product recommendations
Retailers are good at mass communication, but connecting with customers one-on-one is super important. We aim to make every interaction, whether in-store or online, as personalized as possible.