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SCHOOL LIFE | PROMOTION: SCHOOLBLAZER | 27
What gets measured gets done
Tim James explains why strong contracts and key performance indicators are vital when it comes to school uniforms
satisfaction in schoolwear”, it is important to understand the drivers of customer satisfaction and measure the results. Before founding Schoolblazer, we conducted in-depth research with both parents and schools. This gave us three vital customer insights. These remain the cornerstones of our business philosophy. We identified that parents and schools wanted:
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A simple and convenient shopping solution Uniform purchasing is a “chore not a choice” and the retail solution must be simple and easy, reflecting the fact that over 75 percent of parents have dual careers.
High quality, well-designed garments Fundamentally, uniform is designed to brand the school, be worn every day and be durable.
Fair value Independent school parents are prepared to pay more for quality and service: they do not seek the lowest absolute price, but do need to be convinced that the overall value equation is fair.
Our ability to innovate and deliver high-quality, well-designed garments has been widely recognised. From new fited jackets, pinstriped suits and tweeds through to high-performance sportswear, we’ve transformed the look of over 130 schools in the last 10 years. Our garments are worn across the country, from Cheltenham Ladies’ College to Roedean, Newcastle High to Westminster. What is less visible is our focus on
operational excellence and continuous improvement. We aim to ensure that shopping with Schoolblazer gets simpler and more convenient every year. We’ve driven a step-change in parental
satisfaction in our partner schools. We conduct a detailed annual survey and present the results to every school for their own parents and for our national
hen you start a business with a simple mission, “To deliver a step-change in customer
performance. Over the last five years we have used this process to reduce levels of parental dissatisfaction from over 20 percent to under 5 percent. Our target is 0 percent dissatisfaction – 100 percent satisfied parents. So what have we done to deliver
this? The biggest cause of complaint in schoolwear is lack of availability of key items. We achieve exceptionally high levels of availability, driven by our investment in stock and systems. Our out-of-stocks on 1 September 2014 were just 0.6 per cent and have been consistently below 1 percent for the last four years. In contrast our benchmarks show an average out-of-stock for the wider industry of well over 10 percent at Back to School, driving the complaints. Returns waste parent’s time and ours.
Our ongoing investment in intelligent sizing and garment fit now enables us to deliver the lowest level of returns in the online garment industry. According to industry sources, average return rates due to sizing for online retailers is around 25 percent. In 2010 under the first iteration of
“WE SET DETAILED PERFORMANCE INDICATORS WITH OUR SCHOOLS AND REPORT AGAINST THEM ANNUALLY”
our intelligent-sizing system our returns for sizing were down to 16 percent. Since then we have consistently improved both the garment fit and our algorithms. Sizing returns are now under 6 percent. We live in a ‘now’ society. We have
invested heavily in developing and upgrading our warehouse systems to respond to our customers’ rising expectations on order turnaround times. In 2012 we were shipping the majority of orders only after five working days. In 2014 we shipped 85 percent of all orders in one day and 95 percent within two working days, almost all with nametapes sewn in. We continue to be the only retailer who
name-tapes all garments free of charge. We sew on over 5km of name-tapes per day during the summer and over 90 percent of all garments ordered are name-taped. We set detailed performance indicators
with our schools and report against them annually. We also put our money behind these, ensuring that there are clauses in our contracts which enable schools to terminate our contract at no cost were we ever to fail to deliver. We set out to transform the schoolwear
market. Not just for garment design, but for service, quality and value. Our results speak for themselves. Don’t your parents deserve beter? iE
Tim James is co-founder of Schoolblazer W:
www.schoolblazer.com
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