Oakley Analytics Insights Drill Down into Retailer Sales Records to Reveal Data that Boost Sales

Most consumers know Oakley primarily for its high-performance sport sunglasses, but the company also manufactures men’s and women’s apparel, footwear, goggles, headwear and other gear for sports enthusiasts who want to push their experiences to the limit.

Revolutionary Company Constantly on the Move

With innovative products for skiing, snowboarding, surfing, cycling and BMX, the California-based company is constantly looking for new ways to infuse technology into the activewear it provides, while investing in intelligent solutions to help drive the performance of its expansive network of retailers.

When one retailer requested to return more than $100,000 worth of typically popular Oakley merchandise due to lagging sales, the team at Oakley thought something sounded off. They believed there was more to the story than what met the retailer’s eye, but the retailer wasn’t able to provide the insight needed to shift its merchandising strategy to optimize performance. That’s when Oakley turned to SPS Commerce and its Point of Sale (POS) Analytics.

A New Perspective for Oakley Analytics with SPS

More than 1,500 suppliers leverage SPS POS Analytics solutions to provide visibility to more than 360,000 retail locations. These cloud-based solutions enable suppliers to access key business metrics from any Internet-enabled device and turn volumes of sales and inventory data into rich insights.

The team at Oakley uses SPS POS Analytics to drill down into the retailer’s sales records to reveal insights that could boost the retailer’s performance. With pre-built dashboards that offer immediate visibility into data that can be segmented by retailer, brand, category, geography or UPC, the solution helps Oakley rapidly assess the retailer’s risks and opportunities.

Meanwhile, the solution’s comprehensive metrics across 800 different business drivers and user-friendly reporting helps Oakley quickly gain and share a complete view of the retailer’s product performance—without the need for IT assistance.

From these insights, Michele McGriff, Oakley’s director of U.S. sales planning and operations, and her team discovered two key facts. First, of the 40 Oakley items sold by the retailer, only about 10—mostly newer apparel products that had yet to gain a following—were responsible for a dip in sales across the entire line. And second, the retailer’s sport sunglasses sales were strong, but Oakley’s distribution center had been out of stock when the retailer last reordered.

“That information becomes so vital when buyers call and say that the product isn’t selling,” McGriff said. “It shows that we understand their business and that we’re looking at and leveraging their sales data in a way that will help them drive their business.”

Oakley Analytics Insights Results in $75,000 Order

After bringing these insights into focus, Oakley worked with the retailer to strengthen its merchandising strategy. Oakley and the retailer arranged to sell the remaining apparel and accessories, while the retailer placed a $75,000 order for sunglasses that had already proven popular with customers. Oakley also took steps to ensure its distribution center would have these sunglasses in stock.

SPS Performance Analytics helped Oakley prove itself as a valuable strategic partner for retailers, surfacing deep data insights that the retailer otherwise wouldn’t have been able to access. At the same time, these analytics helped Oakley uncover new business opportunities of its own. As McGriff said, “We were able to take a request for a $125,000 return and transform that into an additional $75,000 sale.”

Oakley continues to rely on SPS Performance Analytics to help retailers optimize their merchandising strategy, driving the success of its partners as well as its business.