Recycle Boutique
Streamlining processes for employees and customers
We are excited about an app we created for Recycle Boutique that improved their customers’ experience, and we want to tell you about it. We improved customer on-boarding, enabled them to register stock movements more quickly and with less errors, and made payments easier to manage.
Recycle Boutique is a consignment store that enables people to sell clothes, shoes, and accessories. They asked us to create a web portal to integrate with their customer sign-up, email marketing, and consignment processes. Their aim was to save time by reducing errors and replacing manual processes.
The portal allows Recycle Boutique’s consignors (customers) to manage their sales and cashflow themselves. It also introduces new features, such as allowing customers to book courier pickups of clothing.
Enabling more convenient sign-ups for new consignors
Recycle Boutique told us that consignors found the sign-up and selling processes inconvenient and unclear. They had to drive to a store, find parking, and sign-up on an iPad. Although the process was digital, it had to happen in the store. The process was also inconvenient for Recycle Boutique – only one consignor at a time could sign-up using the iPad.
The portal we designed enabled consignors to sign-up and manage their accounts before arriving in the store. We also added a ‘wizard’ to guide them through the process.
Consignors can now sign on with Facebook or Google accounts, removing the one-at-a-time restriction.
Creating consignments more quickly and with less errors
Recycle Boutique’s old sign-up, consignment, and reminder systems were separate and could not share data, causing frustrating errors and extra work. Under the old system, consignors received an email when their items went on sale. They needed to remember to log in to the consignment system to see what they’d sold, and to pick up unsold items within 7 weeks.
To remedy these problems, we created a system that enabled staff or consignors to automatically create new accounts or link existing ones, so consignors no longer needed separate accounts for each system.
We included a booking system for dropping off and collecting items, enabling consignors to book a courier to pick up their items at a convenient time and place.
Making consignor payments easier to manage and keeping value in the business
Every week, staff manually identified consignors that requested a bank payment, calculated the amount owed, and created a schedule for processing payments. This time-consuming work could still cause incorrect payments and frustrate consignors. We modified the portal so it could automatically create payment schedules.
Recycle Boutique found that many consignors took their earnings as cash, instead of store credit. The new portal was an ideal opportunity for Recycle Boutique to explain how easily consignors could use store credit.
These two changes improved the consignor experience, meaning it was easier for them to get paid and get store credit, and improved Recycle Boutique’s control of cashflow. They now have more consignors, who are more loyal and return more often.
Want to find out more about how we can streamline your processes?
