Lifestyle brand looks to Retail Assist to facilitate and support store expansion and growth plans
Cath Kidston, the lifestyle brand famous for its original, vintage inspired prints, has selected managed IT services from Retail Assist to aid the company’s growth plans.
The retailer has recently opened three new UK stores in Chester, Nottingham and Meadowhall this summer, with a further three UK stores scheduled to open this autumn.
Longer trading hours
Mike Padfield, Cath Kidston’s IT director, commented: “As Cath Kidston’s trading hours are growing longer due to our airport and train station outlets, shop staff needed to be confident that they could continue to receive the high standard of support that they were accustomed to. We needed a trusted partner to support our internal IT team, who were busy launching our new UK and international stores.”
Retail Assist has been commissioned to provide a helpdesk service to Cath Kidston stores between 6am and 10pm, seven days a week. The internal IT team have real-time access to Retail Assist’s call management software, meaning complete visibility at all times of any IT issues across the expanding store estate. The specialist provider is also responsible for the escalation of any issues to third party suppliers, such as Cath Kidston’s hardware maintenance supplier, Retail Response.
Good working relationship
Padfield added: “I have previously worked closely with the Retail Assist team, therefore had complete confidence that their helpdesk would be able to deliver the first rate support required, due to the company’s retail and IT specialism and high levels of first time fix rates.”
Cath Kidston has further entrusted Retail Assist to manage global two-way data exchange between its head office and overseas partners in Thailand, Taiwan, Japan and Korea. Ra-X is a data exchange product for sending and receiving product, price, promotion and sales data from store concessions or international locations back to their central operations. Other retailers currently using Ra-X include Aurora Fashions, A|Wear, White Stuff and New Look.
Cath Kidston also recently completed the roll out of between two and five new till management systems, comprising Odysse? integrated touchscreen electronic point-of-sale (EPoS) terminals and matching ODP 200 receipt printers from the Aures Group (Retail Technology magazine, May/June 2012 issue, p6).
