Kookai selects Kewill to enable electronic trading

This article is brought to you by Retail Technology Review: Kookai selects Kewill to enable electronic trading.

The UK operation of fashion chain Kookai, which trades from 9 stores and 46 concessions, has selected Kewill (KWL), a leading provider of software and solutions to simplify global trade and logistics, to supply and implement Kewills MessageBroker Lite service to improve its reporting of business critical data.

MessageBroker Lite will enable Kookai to implement electronic trading with its concessions to support a drive for higher sales.

Daniel Price, Finance Director, Kookai, explained, At the moment a lot of staff time and energy goes into collecting tickets, reprocessing and reconciling data.  There is a risk involved that tickets arent collected.  The new Kewill system will improve accuracy when reporting information, save staff time, increase productivity and improve replenishment which should boost sales.

Kewill MessageBroker Lite is a fully managed business to business (B2B) integration service providing business agility.  Based on current best practice and state of the art technology the solution is an end to end, managed solution that frees users from the complexity and cost of implementing and maintaining B2B integration.

Kookai decided to invest in the system, as a large amount of its business comes from concessions in department stores.  Kookai doesnt currently have a direct link with the EPoS where its concessions are located, and a Kookai product can be purchased at any till within a department store.  When a garment is purchased, a ticket is removed, to be collected by a Kookai employee at the end of the day.  This information is then entered into Kookais own back office system, where the information is also reconciled with the department stores data.  This is a timely process as the tickets can be anywhere in the store.

Kookai selected Kewill MessageBroker Lite because of Kewills expertise in integration and EDI. The rollout is planned to start immediately, ready to go-live in time for the peak Christmas period.

Mr Price continued, We spoke to three of our concession partners regarding the project, and Selfridges mentioned that they were already working with Kewill on an EDI project.  We also spoke to another fashion retailer who is working with Kewill, and the feedback from both references was very positive.

Jacquie Boast, Chief Operating Officer, Europe, at Kewill, said, Alongside our credibility in the retail industry, one of the main reasons that Kookai has selected Kewill is our ability to provide a solution which will enable Kookai to more efficiently manage their ordering processes which will free up time for store associates to enhance customer service.