The Situation
In early 2020, Kazar made a significant change to its global expansion strategy, the company reports. Arkadiusz Brzostowski, Corporate Sales Director at Kazar, explains, “In previous years expansion meant opening more and more retail outlets, mostly in city malls. Today our focus has shifted to growing our business online through our own web store and international marketplaces.”
Brzostowski says Kazar had big plans for international expansion right from the beginning. “We were clear that eventually we wanted to be present on up to 100 marketplaces. Our team is a group of qualified experts, but without any dynamic entry to international markets and external support, our staff would not be able to build all these integrations themselves,” he said.
Brzostowski adds that it would have required a lot of manpower and time, but also specialised know-how.
“We believe we are the best label in Poland and are aiming to become a true global brand. Therefore, we only want to work with the best marketplaces and partners,” he said.
The Solution
Radomir Kiepas, B2B Development Partner and Project Leader for Marketplaces at Kazar, told Rithum that his team was looking for a suitable business partner. “Right from the beginning, we knew that we needed more than short-term support. We required a long-term partner to help us put our aggressive European growth plans into action,” said Kiepas.
In December of 2020, Kazar says it determined that Rithum Managed Services for Marketplaces was the best solution to help support the brand’s growth plans – both with strategic guidance as well as daily operation of its marketplace activities.
Within five months, the fashion brand confirms it was selling on Zalando in 19 countries. This was tackled in three phases, as Kiepas points out. “We started with 10 countries, then added another three and recently expanded into six more markets, including the Baltics, Slovenia, Slovakia and Croatia.”
In addition, during these extremely busy months, Kiepas says the Rithum Managed Services Team started supporting Kazar with automating product feeds for Amazon in five key markets — France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain.
Today, Kazar reports that it has centralised all of its marketplace integrations on the Rithum Platform. According to Kazar, Rithum’s robust data transformation engine – with its wide variety of automation and reporting capabilities combined with the managed services expertise – helps efficiently manage Kazar’s data feeds, listings and orders in addition to automating critical tasks and optimizing performance. The fashion brand reports that it is now able to operate more strategically, expand to new channels with ease, and stave off competition.
The Results
After only a few months into building a presence on multiple marketplaces, Kazar reports that it’s already seeing growth. Brzostowski states, “We knew that going just for a handful of countries would not take us to our goal. Only a wide approach would bring us the results we wanted. And we were correct: With the help of Rithum we increased the number of new customers via Zalando by an astounding 100,000 in the last 12 months. And next year, we hope to yield three times as much.”
Kazar’s representatives state that they especially value the comprehensive expertise of their Rithum account managers, as well as their proactiveness and their structured approach.
”Rithum’s experience in marketplaces has enabled us to generate the international reach we were looking for. Their team of e-commerce experts knows what it takes to establish a real ecosystem for growth,” Brzostowski continues.
Kiepas adds, “To us, Rithum is not just an external company supporting us; we have a real partnership, we are a real team. From the ongoing advice of the account managers to the technical scope of the solutions, we’ve seen great value from our engagement.”
According to Kiepas, “Rithum Marketplaces not only provides the functionality we need today, but also caters to what we have in mind for the next few years, including repricing capabilities and drop shipping.”
According to Kazar, its ambitious growth plans reach beyond Europe. Eventually, Brzostowski said, American and Asian markets will be part of the strategy, as he is aiming to make Kazar a global brand by 2027. “We have everything in place: the products, the customers and the partners — now all we need is a fast go-to-market to deliver on the plan.”
