About Rip Curl

Rip Curl is a world-leading brand of surfing sportswear as well as a major athletic sponsor, with manufacturing and sales facilities around the globe. Since launching in 1969, this hugely popular global brand has been committed to providing surfers with all the equipment they need, no matter where their travels lead them. Its dynamic line of products ranges from wetsuits and surfboards to apparel, accessories, watches, mountain wear and footwear.

Growing Pains

“Expanding globally and growing sales was becoming very difficult. We used different systems in every region, with separate products for field sales and B2B eCommerce, which was very challenging to manage. It was difficult to generate a complete view of customer activity, limited visibility into business KPIs and was a real headache for our IT team” says Matthieu Lefin, Group GM Operations.

On top of that, Rip Curl faced the following challenges:

• Inefficient order taking processes reduced reps’ ability to drive sales and customer relationships
• A need to support catalogs in different languages and currencies
• Global management required alignment of systems and processes across all regions
• Complex management of multiple seasonal catalogs, each with a different life-cycle
• A poor mobile experience did not project the desired brand image and product appeal

Rip Curl realized it needed to rethink how it sells to retailers in its own showrooms or when visiting retail stores and decided to look for a solution that would replace its multiple retailer-facing systems.

Complete Business Transformation

After looking at various solutions, Rip Curl chose to globally standardize its sales operations on Pepperi’s omnichannel B2B sales platform, for the following reasons:

• One platform and a single ERP integration powers field sale and B2B eCommerce
• An intuitive UI and ability to fully brand the app and web storefront
• Alignment of sales operations to a global standard while maintaining flexibility to adapt to local needs
• Fast order-taking for the fashion industry, including matrix ordering by size and color, pre-packs, mix and match, different size scales etc.
• Multi-catalog capabilities for different seasons, languages, currencies, prices and sales terms
• Flexible management of pricing and promotions
• BI dashboards keep managers and reps on-target
• Online/offline native apps for iOS and Android and a webapp for PC users

The Results

Rip Curl rolled-out Pepperi across its European operations, extending it later to the company’s headquarters in Australia and its operation in New-Zealand.

They were able to streamline sales processes, providing a consistent experience to retailers and regional distributors that order online, on the phone, in-person at show rooms and when a sales rep visits them. It freed reps to build customer relationships and focus on strategic accounts.

The new wholesale eCommerce solution helped reach new customers, grow sales and cut rep workload even further.

Integrating sales force automation with wholesale eCommerce proved a winning strategy also for the IT team –