Cross-border commerce integration for retailer banners
Case study:
Cross-border commerce integration for retailer banners
- Situation
- International retail group was targeting the same product and customer segments in multiple countries with several brands, each run as a separate company
- Objective was to integrate activities into one company, capture synergies in assortment, marketing, IT and logistics and serve customers through a cross-border commerce model
- Actions
- Reviewed each country × target group × brand combination by target groups, positioning and assessed commonalities and differentiators for growth and synergy potentials
- Developed two distinct commercial concepts for specific customer segments with clear assortment, pricing and campaign logic and defined one lead concept and brand per country
- Designed an operating model with shared services and central supply chain, keeping buying centralized while dedicating marketing to each commercial concept
- Captured back-office and operations synergies through warehouse and supplier base consolidation and joint IT systems
- Planned migration roadmap including legal entity consolidation, asset and customer file transfer and organizational restructuring
- Results
- One unified commercial concept per geography rolled out with stable sales as customer churn was offset by new customer acquisition
- Centralization into a single cross-border commerce company completed within nine months with structural costs reduced by 50%
- Significant synergies realized across assortment and marketing
- 40% run-rate EBIT improvement achieved one year after integration