SCAYLE Use Case: Our Customer Tom Tailor on K5 Commerce Cast

It is always hazardous to count your chickens before they are hatched. But when a system change goes as smoothly as the migration from Tom Tailor to SCAYLE, you might as well take the risk. So, in the midst of implementing their joint project, Hendrik Reuter, former Director eCommerce & Consumer Engagement at Tom Tailor, and René Dalock, Director Projects & Key Accounts at SCAYLE, took the time to talk about the collaboration.

In the K5 Commerce Cast, a German video podcast series about the latest online retail concepts, Hendrik and René discussed the move to SCAYLE with host Sven Rittau. Among other things, they talked about synergy effects between fashion retailers and the advantages of an API-first approach in such a fast-moving industry. In the meantime, the switch to SCAYLE has been completed and tom-tailor.eu now benefits from modern commerce technology that truly suits the brand. But how did the migration from Tom Tailor to the new shop system work exactly?

Tom Tailor & SCAYLE: Equal Partners

Does it even make sense for a fashion company to use ABOUT YOU’s technology? Aren’t they competing for the same customers? Doesn’t this create cannibalization effects? Maybe. But the pros largely outweigh the cons: “To us, this was definitely not a disadvantage, but rather a deciding factor,” says Hendrik. Tom Tailor was looking for “an equal partner, […] who knows the fashion sector, who – to put it bluntly – cares about how our business does. Who develops an opinion in discussions about joint projects. And who has already been on this journey very successfully themself.”

There is a whole range of opportunities for partners from the same industry to benefit from each other. Joint brand appearances such as at the ABOUT YOU Fashion Week. An exchange of experiences in online or influencer marketing. Joint strategic considerations in the field of internationalization. With SCAYLE, Tom Tailor not only gains a technology provider, but also an experienced sparring partner with similar goals: “We wanted a partner on an equal footing,” Hendrik explains.

Our Customer’s Migration to SCAYLE: Which System Features Remain, Which Are Replaced?

Obviously, an established brand like Tom Tailor is not just getting started with eCommerce in 2021. Tom Tailor has been operating an online shop since 2006. Therefore, they had to determine which system areas should remain and which should be replaced by SCAYLE’s features.

“Of course, we already have a running system, so we didn’t need to start from scratch – quite the opposite. For all of our CRM, in campaign management, in customer analytics and predictions, we use a lot of systems that we want to continue to utilize and strengthen. The key is to build an architecture that is composite,” says Hendrik. Composite solutions are divided into building blocks that can be configured individually and therefore flexibly exchanged and adapted.

The modular API-first approach used by SCAYLE makes this linking of different system modules possible – quickly and flexibly. In René’s words: “The technological basis is characterized by the fact that we ourselves, as ABOUT YOU, use our own product and have influenced it to a large extent. […] That means [the] SCAYLE Commerce Engine comes with a whole set of APIs that make integrations very flexible.”

Tom Tailors Learnings From the Pandemic: Speed and Online-Focus

Like many other fashion brands, Tom Tailor was hit particularly hard by the effects of the Covid pandemic. Much of its retail activity shifted to the Internet, leading to sudden restructuring. According to Hendrik, Tom Tailor learned one thing during this time: the importance of quick adaptability. “What we know and are able to do today – and see reflected in the numbers – may not be the same solutions as the day after tomorrow. That’s why you need speed: in the front end, in the content, in the brand. How do we present the brand? How do we tell those stories across channels? How do we connect with social media? How do we connect with stores in the future? We want to address all of these issues and make them possible through scaling.”

In other words, SCAYLE takes over large parts of the commerce solution and takes care of everything that does not contribute to the differentiation of the brand. This allows Hendrik’s colleagues to focus on what customers love about Tom Tailor. “We want to have less complexity, less emphasis, less effort in the back end. At the same time, we want to be able to focus much more on the front end and our interactions with customers,” Hendrik explains. Many customers still go shopping in the traditional way. Some of them had started ordering from the online shop for the first time during the store closures. After this first instance of dipping their toe in the water, Tom Tailor now wants to shift the relationship between brand and customer increasingly to online channels: more time with digital channels, more interactions with the website. The skilled combination of the two will make a crucial difference.

And what’s next for SCAYLE? Our first customers were mainly part of the OTTO family, but we are now ready for a wide range of different eCommerce companies. René sums it up as follows: “Our target customers are companies that – to put it bluntly – are up for sweet technology and want to build a modular and composable eCommerce tech stack that is best of breed and that focuses on value creation. That’s when we are up for anything.” And: we can definitely do more than just fashion. Our customer DEPOT, for example, sells decorative items and even furniture very successfully with SCAYLE’s Commerce Engine.

Customer Tom Tailor Is Happy With SCAYLE

Synergy effects through shared expertise. Flexible, rapid integration of new and existing system elements. Reduction of complexity. These advantages of SCAYLE have convinced Tom Tailor and can now be fully enjoyed after integration into the Commerce Engine.

Are you interested in knowing where else Tom Tailor is investing or what opportunities Hendrik and René see through internationalization? Then take a look at the video podcast (in German, English subtitles available) in which they discuss these and other topics with Sven. If you want to check out the new store for yourself, take a look at Tom Tailor.