How Patagonia uses TrackFly to better support independent retailers.
Posted by
TrackFly July 15th 2024
How is Patagonia's sales team utilizing the TrackFly connection tool to better support retailer's inventory needs?
DEXTER
The team and I are using TrackFly weekly to go through and check out all of our connected accounts to see what's trending in the store, what sell-through is looking like, what products they are low on inventory. We're actually going through that process and when we see holes in inventory, we're writing an ASAP order, calling the shop, getting on an email thread, whatever it might be, and putting that ASAP order into the system so we've already got the work done for the shop.
CHRIS
From a TCO standpoint we're looking at this data every day to see if a product is in need of ordering. It better alerts us to what we need to order from Patagonia and other vendors to make sure our customers are shopping in a store that's full.
Dexter, how much time has been saved for Patagonia with the result of TrackFly, whether it comes to working with retailers or working internally?
DEXTER
Countless hours, I mean at this point hundreds of hours. On the retailer side, instead of before a call, having to reach out and ask for a sell-through report and dig through the data, everybody's system is different and reports require some filtering, now it's one simple easy to use platform and all that information is sitting there live at my fingertips and filterable for the date ranges that I want it to be or my team needs it to be.
Internally it is unlike anything we have ever seen. At Patagonia, this is helping influence marketing launches, product initiatives, product creation and really helping us get a better overall grasp of what this great industry is and the size of it, so that we can continue to push forward in Innovation.
What would Patagonia say to retailers who are concerned about the brands using the data to help build their DTC efforts?
DEXTER
You know increasing DTC sales at Patagonia Fly Fishing is not a priority for us. It never has been and it never will be but I understand where the concern is coming from and what I can tell you spending probably more time than anybody in the industry digging through that data, is that there's nothing we can pull out of there that gets us to your customer. We're seeing what's actually selling in the shop at real-time and using that to get a baseline of the market and how our products are performing. We don't have the ability through the data package to see your customer or anything about them so I consider that one kind of a moot point.
Chris as one of the largest fly shops in the country and an industry leader, TrackFly and sharing your data seems like something you guys definitely wouldn't want to do…
CHRIS
Yeah I mean we see it the opposite way. Anytime we have new technology that helps us to better understand our business to grow we want to do it and if we can partner with our manufacturers which is the most powerful part of this, it's even better. So, we trust our manufacturers that we're connected with so we've already seen that it helps us to grow and we're continuing to watch that but we have no concerns about this at all. I think that the conversations that have come up because of TrackFly have really helped to bring the industry together in a lot of ways so I'm really excited about it and clearly we're both supporting it.
DEXTER
Yeah, Chris and I are always a phone call or email away to help answer any questions from manufacturers, retailers, or anybody in between on how TrackFly can better suit your business. TRACKFLY
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