In 1889, Carhartt was founded in Detroit by Hamilton Carhartt with the goal of delivering durable products to railroad engineers. Using direct insight from his consumers, he began manufacturing purpose-built overalls, which would become one of his company\u2019s most iconic styles.<\/p>\r\n
More than 130 years later, the team at Carhartt still works to understand customer needs as intimately as its founder did. The task is more complicated in today\u2019s omnichannel retail environment, but Carhartt is using location analytics and innovative thinking to satisfy a diverse customer base across a range of distribution channels.<\/p>\r\n
In an industry with plenty of baggage\u2014including outdated methods of going to market and untested assumptions about consumers\u2014innovative retailers are becoming more data-centric. At Carhartt, a dedicated team of analysts uses location data to inform the company\u2019s omnichannel strategy.<\/p>\r\n
Over the past 15 years alone, Carhartt has redefined its business to accommodate the changing habits of customers. In that same period, the company has manufactured millions of garments\u2014including more than 20 million pieces of product at its facilities in Kentucky and Tennessee\u2014and sold them through online and offline channels, including its own brick-and-mortar stores, wholesale distributors, retail partners, and e-commerce sites.<\/p>\r\n
Seeking innovation and increased brand awareness, Carhartt\u2019s data engineering team first introduced\u00a0location intelligence\u2014the data-driven output of a geographic information system (GIS)\u2014six years ago to better understand the types of shoppers who gravitate to the brand\u2019s durability, fit, and style.<\/p>\r\n
Today, the Carhartt team uses location data and analytics to assess new markets, understand behaviors across channels, and create a road map for company growth. \u201cGIS lets you see things in a whole new way,\u201d explains Erik Isaak, the company\u2019s principal data engineer. \u201cSalespeople can look at their territory and see all their stores and get data about the things around them. It\u2019s something that you just can\u2019t get out of a text-based report.\u201d<\/p>\r\n
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Carhartt\u2019s omnichannel evolution has been a stepwise process marked by thoughtful leadership and a dedication to striking the right balance among channels. When executives decided to expand e-commerce, for instance, the team spent months analyzing how online sales would impact the profits of retail partners that stock Carhartt products, as well as Carhartt\u2019s own 33 store locations.<\/p>\r\n
That exercise exemplified the company\u2019s innovative mind-set. Instead of settling for a standard visualization of sales results, Carhartt used location analytics to go deeper. As the company broadened its reach into omnichannel retail, the data team delivered maps that showed executives not only how products were selling in certain channels, but how one channel\u2019s performance sometimes impacted others\u2019.<\/p>\r\n
First, the team used GIS technology to map all 33 Carhartt stores and any wholesale partners within a 25-mile radius of each location. Then they overlaid purchase data on the map to understand each store\u2019s sales performance and the kinds of customers that shopped those locations. Finally, they layered in online purchase and browsing behavior to understand how e-commerce was influencing customer spending in those areas over time.<\/p>\r\n
Sales operations and analytics manager Steve Sapardanis says the analysis answered a question at the heart of omnichannel retail. \u201cWhat we wanted to understand [was], were we just shifting dollars from our wholesale partners to our retail location to our online business? Or were we really seeing a shift in a dynamic of shopping behavior?\u201d<\/p>\r\n
The analysis revealed that the company\u2019s online presence was actually elevating Carhartt brand awareness among customers and benefiting wholesale accounts as well\u2014a\u00a0retail phenomenon known as the halo effect. That information helped wholesale partners see the value of e-commerce expansion.<\/p>\r\n
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Sapardanis remembers how impactful the analysis was, and the simplicity of showing sales results on a smart map. \u201cYou can literally see the numbers and the color coding that indicates whether it\u2019s up, it\u2019s down, it\u2019s plus, or it\u2019s minus. We had never looked at data and performance in that way at Carhartt before, so it\u2019s been revolutionary.\u201d<\/p>\r\n
The team uses location intelligence and a similarly analytical approach when opening a retail location. \u201cWhen we go into a market with a store, we want to make a splash,\u201d says Steve Brennan, Carhartt\u2019s vice president of data strategy and analytics. \u201cWe also want to make sure that we\u2019re cognizant of the fact that our legacy is through our wholesale partners, so we can\u2019t be myopic with those decisions.\u201d<\/p>\r\n
The team recently performed location analysis on a proposed Carhartt store in Denver, Sapardanis says. \u201cI used the mapping tool to pull in the proposed location and the locations of our wholesale partners and shared the results with the leadership team,\u201d he says. \u201cQuickly, decision-makers saw how close the store would be to two key wholesale accounts. Executives ultimately decided to open the store in a different location in order to preserve a healthy relationship with partners and not oversaturate the proposed market with Carhartt product.\u201d<\/p>\r\n
In addition to shaping business strategy and growth, location intelligence has helped Carhartt manage through periods of uncertainty.<\/p>\r\n
When the COVID-19 pandemic took hold earlier this year, the company relied on its crisis management team to guide key decisions.\u00a0Like many business executives, Carhartt\u2019s leaders sought daily and weekly updates showing the virus\u2019s impacts on the health and safety of employees, sales channels, inventory, store closures, and revenue.<\/p>\r\n
The data engineering team used GIS to visualize the spread of the virus and associated sales patterns. Their smart maps continue to help the team understand how COVID-19 is affecting sales at retail locations and among wholesale partners.<\/p>\r\n
\u201cWe are using our real-time, empirical data. When we mapped it, we could see geographically where changes were happening,\u201d Sapardanis explains. \u201cWe can look at the point of sale [POS] information each week to understand, Where are the sales continuing and where are they not? Who is staying open and where are the doors closing?\u201d<\/p>\r\n
He says Carhartt\u2019s decision-makers have taken notice. \u201cI can\u2019t tell you how impressed leadership was when they saw the data displayed in that way,\u201d Sapardanis says. \u201cI knew that the tool was a huge win, but that really solidified it and took us to a new level.\u201d<\/p>\r\n
The team also uses GIS to support employee safety\u2014an effort that relies on authoritative, near real-time data.<\/p>\r\n
\u201cWe created an app that color-codes each county in the country and explains what stage of the epidemic that county is in\u2014whether it\u2019s under control, spreading, or a full-scale outbreak,\u201d Isaak says. \u201cWe took that map and then layered our stores and where our salespeople are on top of that.\u201d<\/p>\r\n
The team hopes that by delivering those smart maps, they will help executives and sales managers make more informed, real-time decisions to protect employee health.<\/p>\r\n
In times of\u00a0disruption\u00a0and\u00a0growth, Carhartt has come to rely on location analytics to make smart decisions for customers and for the company\u2019s long-term health. But the technology didn\u2019t turn heads immediately.<\/p>\r\n
Dwayne Newsome, manager of data engineering at Carhartt, says colleagues saw the value of location intelligence over time.<\/p>\r\n
\u201cWe would get a request from a salesperson asking us to look into retail partner prospects and the demographics of customers in a certain area,\u201d Newsome says. The salesperson might ask what kinds of shoppers frequented particular sales channels, and what the predominant customer persona was in a particular area. \u201cWe would give them a set of maps and some data, and then they would take that and use it to talk to the customers. Fast-forward a bit, and every year we got a little more interest.\u201d<\/p>\r\n
Most recently, Carhartt has expanded its GIS use from analyzing current trends to also modeling future outcomes. Newsome calls it a natural extension of the company\u2019s data-focused approach. It helps the team get more from the POS data they\u2019ve gathered from hundreds of different sources including wholesale partners, website, retailers, brick-and-mortar stores, and Amazon. Newsome explains the team\u2019s thinking: \u201cWe have all this data. Why don\u2019t we try to model some of this and predict what\u2019s going to happen?\u201d<\/p>\r\n
To perform that exercise, they rely on an advanced form of location analytics that crunches sales data from multiple channels along with information on consumer demographics to\u00a0predict how a geographic market will perform. It represents the next stage of strategic planning for omnichannel retailers, and leaders like Carhartt are already pushing the boundaries.<\/p>\r\n
Ultimately, Newsome says, location technology has been a unifying force at Carhartt, enabling all business units to work together on a single source of truth.<\/p>\r\n
\u201cI think it helped create a clearer picture,\u201d Newsome says of the location intelligence generated by GIS. Because [the] retail [division] has its own leadership, wholesale has leadership, [e-commerce] has leadership. GIS provided them all with one set of data, displayed visually, so they can see what\u2019s happening and make a better decision.\u201d<\/p>\r\n
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In 1889, Carhartt was founded in Detroit by Hamilton Carhartt with the goal of delivering durable products to railroad engineers. Using direct insight from his consumers, he began manufacturing purpose-built overalls, which would become one of his company\u2019s most iconic styles. More than 130 years…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7396,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[47],"class_list":["post-7399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog-en","tag-retail-2"],"yoast_head":"\n