Topshop Beats Asos And M&S As Best Omni-Channel Retailer... But Overall Execution Across Retail Was 'Poor'

Topshop has beaten off a host of high street and online fashion rivals as best omnichannel retailer.

The fashion chain, owned by billionaire Sir Philip Green, performed well in categories such as mobile and 'in store' in the survey of 25 operators by retail consultants at Kurt Salmon. It included Asos, John Lewis and Marks & Spencer.

But the survey also highlighted that even many of the best performers could claim 'good but not great' services across different channels.

“Retailers just do not have the ‘glue’ they need to link all the channels together, so they are disappointing customers and losing sales,' explains Kurt Salmon partner Siobhan Gehin.

'While these retailers are significantly ahead of the average, not one retailer demonstrated best practice across all customer touch points. In particular, when it comes to order fulfilment and operating across multiple channels, execution is poor,' she said.

John Lewis and Marks & Spencer also had a good mobile offer and Harvey Nichols performed well in store. Meanwhile, House of Fraser was the best executioner of cross-channel and order fulfilment and for social media while Asos 'not surprisingly' was the leading exponent online.

The survey was carried out from January to March this year.

It found retailers were still not confident in their stock file accuracies, which is leading to significant lost business, with just five out of the 25 retailers surveyed having a store stock checker and only one offering reserve & collect - where the customer does not have to pay until collection.

Fashion retailers have been quick to embrace click & collect but the offer is not consistent, with eight of the fashion retailers surveyed offering a three day click & collect facility.

'Retailers who do mobile well recognise that the customer has her mobile phone in her pocket 24/7. But, for instance, one retailer with more than 20m likes on Facebook does not even have an enhanced mobile site which is tragic,’ said Gehin.

Topshop stood out from the competition for its highly engaging content online, a clean and highly functional mobile site with social well integrated. And its in-store experience matches that of a more upmarket retailer, with a strong service proposition, including personal shopping facilities.

The grocers, on the other hand (F&F, George and Tu) were below average on most dimensions, with the in-store experience being their biggest challenge, followed closely by mobile.