Travel Company’s ‘Popstock’

The Challenge: 

Simpson Group are proud to have partnered with this leading travel company over the last 28 years supporting them in becoming the world’s biggest travel group. With a large estate of more than 600 shops it was important for the company to maintain a fast ordering, call-off and POS delivery system across all promotions during the year. More accurate allocation of POS and a faster response to orders ensures that shops are showcasing the right information at the right time. Leading to increased customer relevance, campaign integration and ultimately driving sales. With so many stores, the existing manual system for ordering POS was difficult for shops to use to place their orders resulting in errors which took up a lot of time in the retail marketing team to rectify before approving the orders. 

The Solution: 

Working collaboratively with the travel company, we developed an automated system ‘Popstock’, for the management and maintenance of an up-to-date POS online library of printed, available, POS stock items which can be called off in short quantities. This stock ordering system is available 24/7 which allows stores to order POS as and when required. Once the stores have placed their order, retail marketing are notified immediately allowing them to approve the order before processing. Orders are sent directly to the Simpson Group warehouse for same day picking and packing, and delivery into the shop the following day. This reduces the admin for the retail marketing team whilst still maintaining a level of control. The reporting system allows the team to identify which stores are requesting stock, how often, which specific POS items are being requested and the reason for the order. The online site is branded TUI and budgets and approvals are all controlled by head office.

Impressive Results:

• Following the introduction of the automated Popstock system calls offs reduced by 47% = approx £17,520 savings pa in despatch costs
• Before the system was introduced a total of 58 days of retail marketing time had been occupied between June to December 2014. In contrast, the time spent between January to June 2015 had decreased by 19 days
• Cost effective and now easily accessible online POS ordering
• Faster turnaround speed
• Smart reporting alerts the travel company if stocks are low so they can request more to be printed
• Analysis of store usage rates also lets them know whether to print more for the next promotion, so first time allocations become more accurate

Client Feedback:

 “Since the introduction of Popstock the reduction in store queries has drastically reduced, which has freed up resource in the retail marketing team to focus on new initiatives to increase footfall and profitability.”

Senior Retail Marketing Manager