Frances Valentine

Almost 10 years after selling her namesake company, Kate Spade New York, and its original founders reunited to launch their latest vision in women’s accessories.

Introducing fun, chic, whimsical, inspired and irresistible eye candy in 2016.

At the time that Kate, Andy, Elyce and Paola made their permanent footprint on Americana culture, it was the era of driving awareness through the all-important trade show circuit where if you succeeded in catching the attention of department and specialty store buyers, you landed significant distribution. Today, entering the market is noticeably different; there is the landscape of eCommerce centered around traffic, customer acquisition from varied online and offline sources, converting customers, establishing customer loyalty and leveraging traditional wholesale partnerships as a means of marketing, in addition to distribution in order to successfully drive brand awareness.

Our 1st objective in our strategic planning with the original founders of Kate Spade New York, was to ensure that the introduction of Frances Valentine via francesvalentine.com was successful in communicating a brand that centered around shoes as opposed to handbags; that it highlighted the origins of its famous founders and promoted their collective commitment to quality centered around Italian manufacturers as a quality differentiator. There was equal prominence in an effort to leverage significant press culled from Vogue, WWD, and ensuring that FV was capturing fashionistas’ attention, who were eagerly awaiting the debut of Kate, Andy, Elyce and Paola’s 1st collection in nearly a decade, in order to meet eCommerce channel projections tied to its Valentine’s Day debut.

Taking the guesswork out of establishing an eCommerce operation

While publicists began to get the word out, and family-run factories tied the finishing touches onto Frances Valentine’s first line, netamorphosis stepped in to provide guidance on eCommerce best practice commenting on the designs produced by Partners & Spade, weighing in on primary UX Design, providing eCommerce supplemental wireframes and designs for the shopping cart, checkout, operational and ‘subscribe list’ email templates, in addition to customer care sections for Frances Valentine’s new virtual home.

We provided content guidance by way of image asset art direction feedback, product copywriting and handled all copy for customer care and operational policies.

We defined, communicated and performed UAT across business and technical requirements for all platform touchpoints, including the primary Magento eCommerce platform, email marketing software, social media plugins, the shipping integration and payment processor. We served as the lead on eCommerce development for all 3^rd Parties, including the development partner and 3PL (3^rd Party Logistics Provider).

We worked directly with Frances Valentine’s legal team to ensure policy alignment in accord with the operations that were implemented upon our recommendation following competitive analysis and established with the 3PL.

Optimization = the opportunity to learn + streamline operations

Platform launches, no matter how you look at them, are messy. In technology terms it’s the equivalent of having a baby, where the 1st trimester (in parallel) can allow for reflection (in midst of fatigue), and the ability to establish routine.  At neta, we use this post-launch time period, termed ‘optimization’, at the inception of performance management, to ensure revenue targets are being met. To support ongoing performance management, we provide top-notch analytics consulting that outlines metrics that should be evaluated as a baseline performance gauge, and if appropriate, we even participate in recruiting and on-boarding practices to ensure that our clients have the best resources in place in order to run a successful eCommerce operation in today’s retail environment.

And that’s what we call, putting a ‘bow on it’.

Our Results

Our role with Frances Valentine was strategic and we served as the Head of their eCommerce channel during the stressful and demanding time of a brand launch. We then helped to secure 2 ideal full-time headcount to ‘man and run’ the channel in order for francesvalentine.com to hit its growth projections in accord with our business consulting and eCommerce channel strategic planning KPI’s:

• 3-Year CAGR = +303%
• Y/Y eCommerce channel growth = +121%