rag & bone partners with Astound Commerce to overhaul online customer experience

Fashion brand rag & bone has partnered with Astound Commerce to create an online experience designed to accelerate its global direct-to-consumer (DTC) operations, built on Salesforce Commerce Cloud.

Following a project discovery phase, Astound Commerce completed a brand, web analytics and SEO analysis and customer experience audit - determining that an e-commerce replatform and redesign were the best approaches for the client’s business in achieving its digital transformation goals and vision.

Astound Commerce leveraged its proprietary accelerator, Launch360: Storefront, to reduce cost and speed time to market for rag & bone, upgrading its legacy Salesforce Commerce Cloud implementation to a fast, modern reference architecture. 

Core to the experience enhancement, it integrated Page Designer modules, which enable the brand to offer customers personalisation, more robust merchandising, and compelling storytelling - all capable of being activated without the need for development team involvement.

Third-party integrations for key e-commerce features such as ratings and reviews and tax calculations were also implemented to improve usability.

Astound enabled the transition of rag & bone’s customer relationship management (CRM) system to Salesforce Marketing Cloud and replaced its enterprise resource platform (ERP) to better support the brand’s cross-functional processes and omnichannel capabilities.

Fulfilment operations were centralised by integrating new payment providers (including an end-to-end cross-border solutions provider) and replacing rag & bone’s order management system (OMS). 

The new OMS and optimised checkout process have enabled the brand to unlock future omnichannel strategies, which include Click and Collect capabilities.

An overhaul of the customer service experience was also deployed, led by an updated customer service platform and the integration of more self-service options - key features that include order tracking and returns processing.

Lastly, a redesign of the front-end user interface capped off the e-commerce enhancements delivered for the fashion brand by Astound.

Melanie Masterson, Vice President, E-commerce at rag & bone, comments: “Our goal is to create a seamless customer experience by building a strong omnichannel foundation through a new OMS and bring those capabilities to life through a new website replatform and redesign.”

“We wanted a partner for execution and strategy. This allowed us to support the functions of omnichannel and give us more creative flexibility to support future initiatives, lay the foundation for personalised experiences and stories, and ultimately scale our business.”

“We’ve also taken this success to build on our partnership, from partnering on our SEO strategy to helping us think through how we maximise this new platform foundation for our business long term.”

Astound Commerce will continue SEO and marketing initiatives for rag & bone.