Speaking to Retail Week at supplier VCSTimeless’s user event in Barcelona last week, Rip Curl Europe chief executive Olivier Cantet said that he planned to increase the number of stores from 80 to 150 in the next five years and meet its aim of being “great at retailing”.
Using the VCSTimeless Columbus head office system, it rolled out last year, the surf brand has improved its management of stocks, replenishment, promotions, markdowns and forecasts in the 10 countries it operates in.
Cantet explained: “We have moved from a wholesale way of working, which is disconnected from current retail trends. The wholesale system is six months ahead, so you are doing things blind because you don’t know what will happen.”
He says that, for products such as wetsuits, this time lag between when orders are placed and when products go on sale is not such an issue, but for fashion clothing, you need to be able to make decisions much closer to when products are sold so that they are based on present trends.
Cantet added that the business information that the retailer is able to derive from having real-time systems could also be fed back to its wholesale clients to help them make decisions in their own stores.
However, he continued that the balance of business between stores and wholesale would continue to change in favour of stores. “In five minutes in one of our stores, you can understand the concept of our brand. If we only distribute our products through multi-brand stores, it will take years before people understand what the brand is about,” he said.
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