Cotton On extends loyalty program to Aussie customers

Matthew Elmas

27th Mar 2018

Cotton On Group has today launched a portfolio-wide loyalty program in a bid to further increase collaboration between its brands and extend its data capabilities.

Cotton On & Co Perks is the apparel giant’s first loyalty program and from Tuesday is available to shoppers across the country online and in-store.

It follows the launch of the program in New Zealand, Asia and South Africa late last year and comes only a week after the re-launch of the Cotton On & Co e-commerce platform, which also now features all seven of the company’s brands.

Cotton On Group’s general manager of e-commerce Brendan Sweeney said that loyalty will complete the picture for the group’s renewed focus on portfolio-wide initiatives that can deliver on enhanced convenience and a broader range of products.

“Nobody else has anything that spans across the whole family of brands,” he told Internet Retailing. “That’s really unique.”

Cotton On has also recently begun rolling out mega stores that combine its seven brands – Cotton On, Cotton On Body, Cotton On Kids, Typo, Factorie, Supre and Rubi – under one roof and is now facilitating cross-brand click and collect, enabling shoppers to buy online from one brand and collect from a sister-brand’s store.

As the business begins to take a more portfolio-wide approach to its operations, Sweeney said the data visibility that an international loyalty program will provide stands to be central to Cotton On’s ability to innovate in the future.

“We see tremendous value in understanding our customers almost from cradle to grave,” Sweeney said.

“[Currently] we intuitively understand customers, but this gets us to actually understanding them at an individual level across our brands.

“Maternity customers in our Body business are likely to become potential Kids customers in six months,” Sweeney explained. “Our Kids business only sells to size 8 but we have a number of teen businesses.”

Since launching in New Zealand last November Cotton On & Co Perks has quickly grown to become 50 per cent of all sales coming through three of the group’s brands across the Tasman.

Sweeney hopes it will be even bigger in Australia and is targeting 3 million sign-ups in the next twelve months, with a longer-term target of 60 – 80 per cent of total local sales coming from program members.

“It enables us to be much more targeted because we’ll understand who they are and where they shop down to a store level,” he said.

It is also hoped that increased visibility of customers will outline areas of unmet demand in the market, opening the door to potentially launching new brands in the future.

“I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it gives us new opportunities to launch some new brands to meet needs that are unmet at the moment,” Sweeney explained.

Perks will be available digitally and through plastic cards and will deliver $10 dollars of rewards for every cumulative $100 spent across the Cotton On Group stable.

Cotton On will also be providing members with extras such as Birthday presents and exclusive product previews.

You can read more about Cotton On’s new loyalty program in Inside Retail Weekly, out tomorrow.