The Client:

Manchester-based JD Williams is a leading UK retailer specialising in plus size fashion. With a turnover in excess of £700m and brands such as Simply Be, Jacamo, Figleaves and Viva La Diva, the company has successfully managed the transition from a catalogue based business to become a successful multi-channel, multi-brand retailer. JD Williams is part of N Brown Group – the UK’s largest independent multi-channel home shopping retailer.

The Brief:

For many retailers, international markets offer an increasing attractive growth proposition and JD Williams is no exception. Group Development Director, Paul Kendrick, devised a business plan to roll-out the Simply Be brand and range to Germany. This included extensive market research, a German catalogue, a credit proposition, definition of a fulfilment and returns pipeline, a German based contact centre and a multi-lingual, multi-currency web site. A large scale nationally advertised launch was accompanied by a drop of 400K catalogues, followed by an e-blast of 700,000.

Crimson was asked to work as part of an in-house business and IT team to project manage the Simply Be Germany initiative. There were significant project milestones to address and a real need to adopt a pragmatic, results-focused project management approach.

The Solution:

Crimson worked closely alongside Paul Kendrick to appoint a German software house to implement a contact centre solution. Venda is recognised as a pioneer of cloud-based (SaaS) commerce solutions. Crimson worked with Venda to create a German language e-commerce site.

The project included integration with legacy back office applications for fulfilment via Hermes parcel distribution and collections. The German proposition included a credit offer which meant taking payments via the German banking systems and credit scoring agencies. A translation company was engaged for product copy conversion.