ESPRIT

The world’s first lifestyle brand was launched in San Francisco in 1968. At that time, the couple Susie and Doug Tompkins sold home-made clothes from their station wagon – and they did so with success.

Only three years later, two successful brands, ESPRIT and North Face, were created and a bold idea turned into the independent company Esprit de Corp. with a branch in Hong Kong. ESPRIT already established itself in Germany in 1975. Düsseldorf is still one of the company’s main branches today.

Until 1986 and the opening of the first ESPRIT store in Cologne, ESPRIT sold its goods exclusively through wholesalers and department stores. Nowadays, Esprit Holdings Limited is an international fashion group with almost 5000 employees worldwide, headquarters in Pembroke, Bermuda and operational headquarters in Hong Kong and Ratingen.

In around 430 branches and its own online shop, ESPRIT sells fashion, shoes and jewellery as well as furniture and home accessories in over 40 countries worldwide.

ESPRIT Retail B.V. & Co. KG is already well-positioned digitally. The fashion company’s website is based on a modern online set-up as well as established processes and functions. With the change of CEO in 2018 and a reorientation towards a younger and clear brand image, ESPRIT has already successfully started the race to catch up with the dominant online players.

In order to be able to successfully implement the change with regard to systems and particularly in terms of sustainability, the company was now looking for a reliable partner and a solution that would be able to achieve everything the new, agile team had planned for the future in terms of technology. For ESPRIT, one of the basic prerequisites that the old system did not offer was to be capable of acting and always be able to react quickly and flexibly.

The new project team, consisting of ESPRIT as product owner and stakeholder as well as dotSource and Salesforce as development and consulting team, succeeded in implementing these requirements step by step.

Using A/B testing, the ESPRIT UK and ESPRIT AT shops were launched in the first half of 2020. The old system continued to run in parallel while increasing amounts of traffic were gradually redirected from the old to the new shops.

This controlled, step-by-step approach was also used for the rollout of ESPRIT Germany. This way, it is always possible to test whether the plans are technologically feasible and accepted by customers.

Success & Added Value

In order to keep pace and stand out from the competition, innovative ideas, efficient processes, high pace of adaptation and a strong brand image as well as the necessary system requirements are absolutely crucial. By migrating to Salesforce B2C Commerce Cloud as a strong technological foundation for competitive commerce, ESPRIT can

• react quickly and flexibly
• continue its digital strategy development towards multi-cloud business
• address its target group more personally
• strengthen the loyalty of its customers