Pacific Sunwear (PacSun) began as a surf shop, much like other surf shops, in California, but when the weather got cold and the beaches were bare they got smart and became the first surf shop to enter the world of shopping malls. Rooted in teen culture and SoCal girls and guys fashion, PacSun rocks the latest looks in casual teen apparel from top girls clothing and guys clothing brands like Fox, Billabong, Hurley, Volcom, Element, DC, O’Neill, and more. Their business has grown exponentially to 859 stores and 76 outlets in the United States and Puerto Rico.

CHALLENGE

PacSun began offering surf and skate apparel online in 2000, but were limited by their platform’s capabilities. Frustrated with their lack of flexibility in merchandising and promotion and certain that their current platform would not meet their future goals, PacSun sought a more flexible, scalable solution. In addition to a more robust platform, PacSun wished to reduce internal IT involvement, substantially improve merchandising and promotional capabilities, and increase conversion on the site.

SOLUTION

Fry provided PacSun with an integrated solution for e-commerce, hosting and maintenance that allows for future growth by implementing Fry’s Open Commerce Platform (OCP™) framework. The framework incorporates best practices for architecture, design, usability, and functionality development and was specifically designed to be flexible for the growing needs of brands like PacSun.

OCP’s Site Manager gives PacSun complete and flexible merchandising control and allows the retailer to customize promotions and deliver designated content to the desired users. The administration tools allow non-technical business users to manage the site without regular IT involvement, an important component for PacSun. The robust content management system allows PacSun to organize product categories into merchandising groups within site taxonomy and represent content as categories on primary browsing pages. Fry used CSS and JavaScript throughout the site for dynamic content and layout flexibility. This allows PacSun to manage the content and layout and serve up content based on a particular user experience. A/B testing and targeted content builds loyalty and personalizes the experiences of PacSun’s customers.

The new site utilizes another OCP merchandising concept called Ensembles, a way of merchandising multiple products together as a collection. The Ensemble details page shows all products that make up the Ensemble (shirt, pants, sunglasses, purse, etc.) and the user can purchase any or all of those items.

RESULTS

PacSun is thrilled with the site’s new merchandising and promotional functionality and the ability to reach their customers in a more meaningful and profitable way. The site now offers custom promotions such as 2’fers, BOGO’s, single-use promo codes, and PacLoot, a gift card promotion that offers customers $25 off when they purchase $50 online or in the store. PacSun saw a significant increase in conversion and sales online. Fry is currently redesigning PacSun’s checkout process to further maximize the site’s potential in capturing sales.

"What’s next is what’s now at PacSun and in order to truly provide the hottest looks to our customers, we needed a site that we could easily manage to promote our products. OCP’s Site Manager gives us the means to merchandise effectively." - Tim Katz, Senior Manager of Online Operations, PacSun