Women’s apparel merchant Chico’s FAS continues to have success, acquiring and retaining customers, through its solid loyalty program.
“I’d also like to reiterate the fact that the Chico’s customer remains incredibly loyal,” David F. Dyer, President and CEO of Chico’s FAS, said during the company’s Aug. 26 second-quarter earnings conference call, according to Seeking Alpha. “Looking back at the past 12 months, our retention rate of high-value customers who account for nearly two-thirds of the brand sales was again well over 90%. The Chico’s loyalty program is continuing to deliver benefits, including shopping frequency and spend, both of which were up year-over-year. Our investments in omni-channel are also delivering returns. Chico’s multichannel shoppers are increasing at a nearly double-digit pace. This is especially great news given that multichannel customers spend two times more than those shopping only in stores.”
Chico’s FAS comprises the following brands: Chico’s, White House | Black Market, Soma Intimates, and Boston Proper. It’s a specialty retailer of private branded, sophisticated, casual-to-dressy clothing, intimates, complementary accessories, and other non-clothing gift items.
White House | Black Market’s revamped loyalty program is in full swing after relaunching last February, Dyer noted.
“Like our Chico’s customer, the White House | Black Market customer is incredibly loyal with their retention value of high-value customers being nearly as high as Chico’s,” Dyer explained. “Over the last year, loyalty program drove increased spend, shopping frequency, and retention. We’re also seeing double-digit increases in our very valuable multichannel customers.”
What’s more, the new Soma Rewards program celebrated its first anniversary in the second quarter.
“Our Soma Rewards anniversary email drove Soma’s highest ever online traffic day, even higher than Cyber Monday,” Dyer said. “We’re driving more and more customers to the brand, and like Chico’s and White House | Black Market, shopping frequency and spend increased over the last year.”
The news was not as bright for Boston Proper.
“As for Boston Proper, the news is that we recently began exploring strategic alternatives for the direct-to-consumer business, and we’ve decided to close the stores,” Dyer said. “While we believe the brand has great potential as a direct marketer, store performance has not met our expectations and we’ve concluded that our time, our capital, and our efforts will generate more significant opportunities in our other brands.”
Dyer also spoke about the customer book application as an “exciting opportunity that enables our store associates to leverage our extensive customer information. Every associate will be able to pull up a customer's profile and immediately see what she's purchased in any store or in any other channel. This will facilitate courteous, suggestive selling while the customer is in the store. Additionally, the associate will be able to contact customers when new collections arrive or promotions are active. The customer book puts more power in our associates’ hands than they had with their own personal paper appointment books.”