1. Dave Elston- Head of eCommerce- Europe
Overview of Clarks
Practical experience in Europe
Research from Asia

13. Virtual Trade Team
4 VM’s, 1 data analyst + trade manager
EU MCR Retail Ops + Project Management
EU Digital Marketing team
Manager and EU Marketing ManagerVirtual Content team
FR, DE, NL, ES + Manager
2 x Webmasters
+ Dave
Team Structure

14. • Big challenge is communication
and engagement with markets
• Periods of great collaboration
and then times of disconnect
• We focus on constantly trying to
engage across the teams,
highlighting the positives
• Not only P&L benefit, which sits
in their P&L’s
– other wins such as store locator
use
– good SEO results and resulting
brand visibility

15. • Our DC is based in
Somerset! Cut off times
tricky..
• URL strategy- went local.
Positive for SEO but also
we want to be local within
our global brand
• The words are all provided
by our native content
editors (even in Somerset)
• Call centre is outsourced,
we work with Sykes and so
far been very good for us.

16. • Nothing new here- got to
be local
• NL- Ideal
• DE- don’t like credit
cards!
• We take ELV in DE
• Also working to take
Sofort and payment by
invoice
• PayPal is good across
Europe

17. • Cliches are true
• Germans are fastidious
• Shop by product type-
shoes/boots
• Shoe Technology is very important
• Planned purchases- market is
quickly into new season
• They like to use internal search
and left hand nav.
• Lots of calls to the call centre
about shoes purchased many
many years ago

18. • High. Very high returns rates.
Payment by invoice could make
this worse.
• But we have our highest
conversion rate and highest AOV
from Germany.
• Paid search is important for us but
is v competitive
• SEO is also very
competitive, especially on generic
terms
• Affiliate commission rates are very
high. It has taken a while for us to
build but now much more
positive.

19. • Cliches are true
• The French are much more
‘emotional’
• Less internal search and
navigation, much more use of links
in content/graphics etc
• Shop by end use (ie workwear).
• Fashion and inspirational features
work well and get high
engagement
• Purchase when need to purchase-
much later start to season

20. • Lower conversion rates and
AOV than DE, but also much
lower returns.
• Price driven market online
• Strong affiliate results
• Sales are very different! Dates
are legal..
• A lot more online retailers
holding more promo events,
esp private sales
• Good SEO results for generic
terms

21. • NL is a tough market
• Much lower conversion rates as
people tend to shop around
• Higher returns rates than FR
• React very well to promos
– We’ve seen much higher response rates
to 20% promo’s vs sale
• As per DE move quickly into new
season
• NL is our highest direct load market,
but also reflects on local marketing
team who are more active than
other markets.

22. • In Spain we’ve seen low conversion
rates
– compounded as we see a lot of traffic
from the americas though we don’t ship
there
• Lots of window shopping and research
• V low returns rates
• Excellent, quick generic SEO results
• Device usage is behind UK, NL the most
advanced.
• Partnerships/working with 3rd parties
has been very positive in extending our
reach

24. Top Level Learns
• No license to print money or substantial amount of sales to be made
in year 1 of any business plan and break even at margin level would
be an incredible performance.
• Online sales growing across Asia Pac, with Clarks shoes present for
sale across many sites
• The market for full price Clarks new season shoes is quite limited
online
• The cost bases of operating Asian online businesses will be very
different to the UK and EU (Comparatively cheap marketing and
fulfilment)

25. Top Level Learns
• The brand is at risk in all territories from a combination of
grey (parallel) imports, last seasons markdowns or fake
and needs protection.
• Sales of Clarks shoes online are mostly at a substantial
discount of the local retail prices
• Market places (online shopping malls) are the dominant
form of consumer shopping
• The brand needs to establish a strong online presence
now to exploit the opportunity when it comes. The
opportunity in the next 5 years is huge as e-commerce
grows. Get a foothold in the market now before the
market matures and set up is more difficult.

27. China
• The market is huge, potential of 500m consumers but the market is
currently very small for full price Clarks shoes!
• C2C, and marketplaces, completely dominates and will continue to
do so for some years.
• Chinese B2C AOV is v low and there are not many consumers able
to purchase high priced products yet
• Taobao is the dominant internet sales platform across China
(accounting for some 80% of the total retail market), and is mostly
used by consumers for C2C. Products and prices are cheap. Grey
goods and fakes are prevalent.
• Tmall is Taobao’s B2C platform and both sites are interlinked via
search. To have any ecommerce success in China you must have a
presence there.

28. China
• Most payment is taken by COD or via Alipay, part of the
TaoBao family.
• For Brand Protection, an official brand presence on
Tmall would be v useful. Currently the commercial
benefit is less.
• Our nearest market competitors in China currently make
circa £50k in sales a month from a presence on Tmall
combined with a stand alone site.
• For Brand ‘sites’ within Tmall, sales equate to about 3
large physical stores in sales. Most of their trade is at a
large discount.

29. China
• There is increasing traffic looking for Clarks online.
• We could expect potentially sub 100k visitors a week but
with a low conversion rate around 0.2% (typical for a premium
western brand.)
• Search Engines are lot more disparate than in the UK and
different techniques are used to acquire traffic.
– ie on Baidu you can buy page 1 of search results for your
brand for a quarterly fee and add video’s, image etc
– TaoBao/Tmall is the largest used search engine for
ecommerce as they do not list in Baidu
• A typical sales split would be Full price 10% of mix , reduced
price 90% of mix. Returns will be around 10%

30. China
• A Web site set up could take 3-4 months with a local
service provider. These can provide a full service offer
(contact centre, website build, fulfilment & marketing).
Set up fees + % sales agreement (ideally highly variable
based at launch dependent on volume which is likely to
be low)
• There is high availability of domestic logistics providers,
but local platform providers are less prevalent.
• China requires a more localised solution to the rest of
Asia as market so different
• Substantial opportunities exist in Hong Kong, Taiwan &
South Korea with right business relationship

31. Japan
• The opportunity in Japan is as big as China for the first 2 years
• 80% of the population have access to the internet, with 70% of
internet users having purchased, predominately through
marketplaces.
• Although younger consumers in Japan have led adoption of
ecommerce over 30’s are now showing increase spend online, esp
around mid-premium goods
• Marketplaces are very important in Japan as in China .
– Rakuten is by far the biggest, and has lots of grey imports and
last season reductions. General Brand presence on Rakuten is
low

32. Japan
• Distribution needs to be reviewed to manage grey imports etc plus
presence on Rakutan should enable better brand protection.
• Zozotown is a brand key marketplace and represents a good brand
fit.
• One service provider for platform, customer care and fulfilment
across SE Asia and Japan could fulfil requirements.
• In Japan, service providers who can provide all ecom capabilities
seem to be much less than China so a solution would probably
require a number of partners.