Brick-and-mortar stores had always been the primary focus for SLOW, a handmade leather goods brand from accessories maker Inoya. With 9 urban boutiques across Japan, plus distribution through major department stores, the brand launched its e-commerce business as a secondary channel about 2 years before COVID hit.
SLOW’s Brand Director Yoshito Fukada was skeptical about the value of their online presence at first. But he saw the true impact of their digital transformation during the pandemic.
“With a lot less people visiting our stores, we saw a significant drop in offline sales in the beginning of the pandemic,” says Yoshito. “E-commerce sales helped us cover the loss, and that’s when I realized the real value of being online.”
SLOW now uses multiple online channels to tell its brand story and keep a high level of customer engagement, including the official website, YouTube channel, and Google Ads.
It was Keisuke Tanaka, Digital Specialist at SLOW, who believed the brand had the potential to grow online. He convinced Yoshito to enrich the website content and start boosting it with ads, which resulted in a 7x increase in online sales. Even in the summer, which is typically a slow season, growth was steady.
They also started making data-driven decisions on their product portfolio, based on the Ads performance result. It’s now an invaluable channel for them to learn what customers want.
Yoshito is now convinced that online channels are just as important as their offline stores.
“There’s a clear synergy between them,” he says. “I now hear everyday from our customers that they saw our ads online and decided to visit our store.”
