What do you do when a product isn’t selling through? It’s a question many brands and retailers ideally wouldn’t have to ask, but unfortunately many must do exactly that at certain times during the year.

The complexities of retail life also mean that a sell-through issue can often lead to tension and stresses in brand-to-retailer relationships.

Who’s to blame? Has the buyer overbought and made a poor judgment call? Has the brand not been supported with enough VM and marketing efforts? At the end of the day, the last thing anyone wants is for the red pen to come out, discounts issued, margins weakened and relationships rocked.

A new approach

That’s why when retailer Elverys (Intersport’s principal member in Ireland, with 70 stores) noticed a sell-through issue with one of their leading global footwear brand’s SKUs, they decided to try something new.

Elverys buyer Chris Rowland has been working for the company for almost a decade and is responsible for buying in footwear, clothing and swimwear for Elverys:

In the past, when Chris and the buyers at Elverys had noticed sell-through issues, they would request that an in-house team create and distribute a tech spec of the product across their stores. Not only was this tech sheet delivered in a way that isn’t consistent with how millennials like to learn (through short bite-sized videos), but there was no accountability or transparency on who viewed the document or which of their stores and staff read or even engaged with the information.

For this particular product, Chris used his expertise and knowledge of the Myagi by Rallyware platform to try something a little different:

“I have a great relationship with the brand, and I knew that they were using the platform and often share content with our sales associates through it. When I looked into the content they had sent through for that season though, there was no video’s for that particular SKU. So I literally fired off a two sentence email to my close contact there and said:

And in just a few days they had filmed, uploaded and shared with us videos that addressed that SKU specifically, outlining everything our staff needed to feel confident recommending the product to customers and explaining the benefits. They were great, no questions asked they were completed on board and understood how it could help. The rewards for them in terms of resulting sell-through is great.”

Elverys’ staff have a strong training culture that is reinforced from their senior staff members. Within just a few days of uploading the content, hundreds of attempts had been made at completing the new training in Myagi and the impact on sell-through is clear:

The sales data shows an incredible 40% increase in sales in relevant lines from before the modules were available to staff, and after the modules were consumed (over a 6-week period). Chris, like all buyers and retail workers, knows that there is never just one single reason for the increase in sales, but he did admit that this showed a striking increase:

Training used to be something that happened infrequently, for the few and not the many, taking a huge amount of time, money and resources to deploy.

With a collaborative training platform like this one, two businesses with a shared interest in driving results on the shop floor were able to very quickly solve a problem that used to take weeks or result in weakened margin and brand image.

*NOTE: Some of the results at the top of this customer story might be an average for all Myagi by Rallyware customers, not specific to this customer.