Like most fashion-focused retailers, Lene V operates in a fast-paced industry: product cycles are seasonal, churn is rapid and peak sales periods are measured in weeks and days rather than months. As the company’s understanding of what’s possible via rapid e-learning has matured, so too have the business’s e-learning applications.
A growing operation with a highly dispersed staff base, Lene V’s challenge was to create an effective knowledge-sharing process to address the problem of time lag in the seasonal campaign cycle. Like most fashion retailers, Lene V’s sales year comprises five promotional seasons: spring, summer, autumn and winter, plus special festive sales promotions over Christmas. Within these seasonal periods, numerous flashpoints occur as new stock arrives in-store and fresh marketing support goes live.
In the fashion business, where sales cycles last approximately 90 days and peak sales opportunities are concentrated within the first month, a familiarisation period of even three or four days has a clear negative impact on the bottom line.
“It’s during the first few days of each marketing campaign that potential for lost sales peaks in retail,” explains Stine Antonie Ødegård, training and recruitment manager at Lene V. “This is the time when expectations from the customer are highest: they are eager to see the new products that we’re actively marketing, learn more about a range’s colours and combinations and how to accessorise and work with new products to create great new looks. Yet it’s during this early stage of a marketing campaign that staff know-how can be at its lowest. Salespeople are just discovering new ranges for themselves: deciding how to mix, match and accessorise new items and even how best to display new stock in-store.”
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