Customer-Centric Approach Drives Tory Burch's Growth

Chic apparel and accessories retailer Tory Burch is leveraging digital channels to fuel its dynamic growth. In addition to its thriving e-commerce business, the retailer has opened company-owned brick-and-mortar stores in growing markets such as Hong Kong, Dubai and Singapore, not to mention its wholesale presence in leading department stores such as Bloomingdale's and Nordstrom. Yet there's one constant within all these different channels: a commitment to providing customers the best experience possible.

In the opening keynote presentation yesterday at the Shop.org Annual Summit in Chicago, Miki Berardelli, chief marketing officer at Tory Burch, and Matt Marcotte, senior vice president of global stores for Tory Burch, discussed how the brand uses technology to improve its customers’ experiences both online and in-store.

Tory Burch has e-commerce sites in the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, France, Austria and Japan. In addition to those countries, the retailer ships online orders to over 30 more countries. Tory Burch relies on a scalable web platform to enable its international growth online, Berardelli said. As for its international stores, Tory Burch has a presence in 14 countries, including Brazil, China, Philippines and United Arab Emirates, among others.

We're channel agnostic, said Marcotte. Our goal is to tap into the passion of our customers. If we're not 100 percent completely passionate about our customers, we won't make the right decisions.

To help it engage with its passionate customer base, Tory Burch presents itself as an OPEN brand — on-demand, personal, engaged, networked — said Berardelli. Social media is a critical component to that philosophy. Tory Burch engages with its fans via Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, among other social platforms. In fact, the brand's Twitter and Instagram pages are managed by Tory Burch herself.

What differentiates our social media efforts from a lot other retail brands is that we create unique content for each platform, said Berardelli. It's a lot more work, she noted, but the payoff in the end is worth it.