Richard Surman continues journey with Crew Clothing Company as he slides into IT Director role

Richard Surman has taken on the role of IT Director at Crew Clothing Company.

He has been with the retailer since 2020 and previously served as Head of IT, with responsibility for providing business critical IT services for a user base encompassing 150+ head office staff, 450+ user accounts and 100+ retail outlets distributed throughout the UK.

Surman's CV also includes stints at Reiss (as Interim CIO/Head of Operations) and Oasis Fashion (as Head of Business Systems).

E-commerce

Crew Clothing Company is working with BigCommerce to power its e-commerce operation and will be re-platforming its multiple brands with the support of IDHL.

In a LinkedIn post, BIgCommerce said: “Our API first approach and multi-storefront capabilities will enable Crew Clothing Company to cater its multiple brands at a lower cost and a faster time to market.”

Stores

Cegid recently expanded its partnership with Crew Clothing, with the brand now implementing the Newsfeed feature within Cegid Retail Store Excellence.

The British lifestyle label has been a user of the task management and retail operations platform since 2009 and last year rolled-out Newsfeed to its 105 stores.

This aims to bridge the gap between Crew’s management and store teams. It’s helping the teams see not only company wide updates but also updates based on their store, role and interests.

The Newsfeed feature was also rolled-out to Crew Clothing’s latest openings in Canterbury, Stow-on-the-Wold, and to launch stores in Monmouth and London Paddington.

“Previously, we would send out newsletters to stores with an attachment for them to pin to notice boards, and now it goes through Cegid Retail Store Excellence,” said Charlotte Eaves, Retail Operations and Customer Experience Manager at Crew Clothing.

“Each week we have a structured routine for how we send our communications, so instead of having to do everything from scratch, we have lots of pre-set templates which makes things easier.”

“We can also see when stores have read updates. When you combine that with tasking, which is built into the platform, it’s priceless.”

Eaves added: “Rather than having multiple sources of information, stores have one dashboard. We’re also moving away from desktop computers to be more tablet-based. The fact that staff can go to one location on the tablet and navigate to different functions is a huge benefit.”

“As a result of using Cegid Retail Store Excellence, we’ve been able to simplify our tech stack by eliminating a platform we had used for several years and removing the need for stores to access our central intranet, as all the information and files are now on the platform.”