Background
Steeped in history, Van Dal is part of The Florida Group – a family business that can trace its origins back to the early 1900s. Founded by Mr Adelman Goodman – the grandfather of the current chairman – the group originally made shoes in London, but in 1936 decided to manufacture shoes in Norwich instead.
It was that year that the company decided to specialise in high-quality, wider fitting shoes and the name ‘Van Dal’ was born. Many people assume the name must be of Dutch origin – but in truth the evolution of the name is a mystery!
Brief
Both we and the client recognised that this traditional and historic brand was not immediately in tune with cutting-edge consumer technology and the internet as part of its marketing strategy. Previous online presence was low-key. Therefore, with the agency long responsible for the brand’s successful offline consumer and trade creative, we were ideally placed to provide ideas on how we could make the internet work for Van Dal.
Solution
The answer was a trial e-commerce platform, which we rolled out to support the Van Dal Factory Shoe Shop. We felt that a trial e-commerce platform would allow us to see if the target customer group would react favourably to buying online and respond to consumer marketing.
After a successful trial, the team developed a new consumer-facing e-commerce store for the main brand site. Developed to adopt seasonal campaign ‘skins’, the new site closely integrated with our offline marketing and brand strategy to both trade and consumer markets. Supported by a highly successful email-marketing strategy, sales increased by a whopping 1,900 percent as a result!
Subsequent brand sites have recently been created for The Florida Group’s sister shoe brands, Origa Bridal and Filippa Scott – both of which take advantage of our White Label CMS platform.
Result
In just two years, we have seen online sales go from zero to a combined monthly sales turnover in excess of the projected business targets. A great example of how a fully integrated, digital marketing approach can steer a brand online and make it work to new and existing customer groups.
