E-Commerce consulting for Tadashi Shoji, from MAP policy to replatform

Tadashi Shoji designs eveningwear, gowns and bridal, sold through its own stores, department stores and its own website. The website ran on Magento 1 with Salesforce behind it for orders and inventory, and much of the online business was run by hand.

There was no MAP policy, so retailers could advertise the brand's dresses below full price. There were no written procedures, no customer service system or reporting, no affiliate program, and no automated email beyond a few one-off sends. Paid search sat with an outside agency, and shopping ads weren't running at all.

DYODE spent the first two weeks auditing the business and the site. The list covered site speed, missed marketing channels, missing procedures, platform performance, vendor management, reporting and marketplace strategy. A second audit with the Tadashi team looked only at the shopping experience: slow pages, heavy photos, color swatches, confusing product pages and search that didn't work well.

From there we wrote a project plan and set up a weekly scrum with the Tadashi team, so every open item had an owner.

The audit pointed to one opportunity above the rest: retailers discounting Tadashi Shoji online were undercutting the brand's own store. We helped write a minimum advertised price policy covering retailer ads, marketplaces and "see price in cart" tricks, then brought in price-tracking software, negotiated the contract and set up training so the team could enforce it.

We did the same for search ads. We set up trademark monitoring to catch advertisers bidding on the Tadashi Shoji name, chose the keywords to watch, and worked with the brand's lawyer on cease-and-desist letters.

We picked and negotiated the tools the team was missing: Zaius for email and customer data, Zendesk for customer service, and LinkShare for a new affiliate program. We set up a daily Google Analytics report on traffic, conversion and revenue, built three customer profiles for segmentation, and tested a plus-size segment with email and a category banner. We audited paid search, managed the agency against new KPIs, and wrote the job description for a digital marketing manager.

Based on site performance, cost and the team's feedback, we recommended moving off Magento to Shopify Plus and ran the project: requirements and roadmap, cost estimate, app choices, theme selection, the data migration and the launch plan with Shopify.

Tadashi Shoji ended the engagement with a written MAP policy and software to police it, trademark monitoring on its search terms, and a daily report the team could run the business from.

The gaps found in the audit each had an answer: an email platform with segmentation, a customer service tool on trial, a contracted affiliate program, and a planned path off Magento 1 to Shopify Plus.