PROFILE
Shanghai, Hua Hai Road. @ Cath Kidston Ltd.
ALIGNING IT TO INTERNATIONAL EXPANSION C
Cath Kidston is pursuing an international and multi- channel growth strategy. Such bold expansion inevitably comes with IT investment. Alison Ebbage talks exclusively to Mike Padfield, the retailer’s IT director
ath Kidston is on an expansion drive. It opened 34 new stores overseas last year including a flagship store in Shanghai. It also expanded its geographic footprint
in the Far East and
France.The company now runs a total of 66 stores in the UK and grew its sales by 6% in the home market. Yet even with such strong expansion plans, the company admits it is working on a strategy to find a system that will suit its global operations. System changes, where they have been made, have been incremental but are all in the right direction for the company. They have added value in terms of visibility, functionality and are in line with the general direction of travel towards an operation that is seamlessly global and omnichannel. “One of our main priorities is to support the business globally,” says IT director
Mike Padfield. “For example when we looked to open a store in China in 2013 we considered implementing a new PoS [point-of-sale] system, but instead chose to use our existing solution Futura which runs the head office merchandising and store PoS systems with an add-on for China. Whilst a newer version of the POS application was required to support the double byte Chinese character set, we still have a direct interface back into the UK system. “We chose to keep using our existing system, simply upgrading it to the newer
version, due to cost considerations but also because the functionality provided by the existing system is actually more than sufficient” he said. “In Japan meanwhile the approach was different. There the company chose to work with a partner to run the
www.retailtechnology.co.uk Autumn 2014 43
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