connected commerce is about tech as much as it is about the concerted alignment of content, activities, and operations. while it started with supporting the launch and integration of an offline concept, this project grew into a more extensive exercise to improve the entire ecosystem’s efficiency and profitability.

at the time of our involvement, the e-commerce had been established for about five years and had gone through a few rounds of investments. the leadership had been focusing on the creation and management of the platform’s technological infrastructure, which had attracted gifted talent. meanwhile, the commercial and operational arms of the business had been progressing without informed coordination and ended up expanding through diverse business models: cross-border, e-commerce, marketplace, and DTC management of a privately owned brand.

within this scenario, the company wanted to grow into a diversified retail organization by opening physical stores. these would have needed to plug into the existing platform, neither jeopardizing ongoing activities nor affecting the speed of service.

given the complexity of the organization, we started our work with a quantitative and qualitative audit of the entire company centering on revenues, processes, operations, and talent organization so that we could ascertain the state of the business as well as the basis for the creation and integration of the desired offline entity.

much had been achieved. however, the audit highlighted that the company needed to re-focus, define its purpose, and align all divisions’ activities with the mission. and subsequently, invest in retail talent and knowledge that could provide organized content and direction to the tech infrastructure.

an analysis of revenue models emphasized how a strong reliance on cross-border and marketplace sales – within an environment characterized by extensive taxation and high logistics costs - was producing starved marginalities. there was an urgent need to streamline business models, reset pricing policies, and take control of sales management to avoid a situation where rampant discounted sales would further weaken revenue streams.

furthermore, data showed how the company needed to adopt a new assortment-sourcing strategy. this step would imply the re-elaboration of the merchandising offer through decisive editing of the brands and product lines sold on the platform, leading to the consequent re-balancing of revenue models in the attempt to improve marginality and the swift upgrading of forecasting and planning processes to sustain proper functioning of operations.

to empower the product strategy, we initiated an appraisal of the existing IT systems and identified new software that could aid product and supply chains. these solutions could be integrated into and re-qualify the existing infrastructure as well as allow monitoring and management of a multiplicity of sales channels. the integration of systems would grant the creation of tools that could provide product and logistics management, community leaders, and customer service teams with precise, reliable data to inform and boost both operational flows and customer service design.

in practice, we devised a process to rekindle siloed activities into a common canvas and introduce a customer-centric culture that all parts could serve together.

the extended analytical work - a comprehensive numerical and on-site qualitative analysis of the company and its community of stakeholders - culminated into a detailed action plan that, through a process of ‘re-thinking’ and identifying clear and competent roles and responsibilities, would have supported the ambition to re-qualify and strengthen the existing company. thus making it a profit-capable entity able to create and sustainably drive a new offline retail division.

the creation of a deliberate strategy - intended to re-design opportunities and reinforce the execution required in the advanced stage of development - helped to define objectives, tools, and business practices necessary to build a robust foundation for future distribution network development.

the road map could not only more vividly convey the founder's vision and expectations to the rest of the company and hopefully ensure cohesive participation, but could - most importantly of all - function as a guide for implementation work to be done on the ground with the team thereafter.

operational auditing | data analytics | financial review | product management analysis | merchandising strategy & management | business & pricing modelling |supply chain review | inventory planning | IT systems auditing & scouting | organizational design | retail concept development | roll-out implementation | project management