The company
This company operates around 2,200 retail outlets in 40 countries, with over 87,000 employees. Their philosophy is simple but effective – to bring quality fashions and trends in clothing to the high-street at the best possible price.
The challenge
With a high public profile, having gained popularity among young, fashion-conscious shoppers in recent years, this client’s retail experience plays an important role in customer acquisition and retention.
Following direction from their head office (and in the middle of a recessive climate), the client asked its suppliers in the UK to make significant cost savings across the board in 2009 – over 40% in some cases. To make such a dramatic change in operating parameters is a tough call for any business, particularly if the direction comes with a caveat regarding ‘no compromise on quality’.
Our approach
Most of our clients contract cleaning services on a £/sq.ft basis – adding or removing specialist items (such as high-rise window cleaning or post-construction clean ups) to a contract, according to the nature and needs of the site/s in question. Raising our concerns at the potential difference of service level, we did our utmost to begin a downscale and transition of service with a small number of the client’s UK sites.
The results
We enjoy excellent working relationships with our clients. It became clear, quickly, that such a dramatic shift in service provision needed a hands-on approach and complete flexibility from our perspective – and a pragmatic approach from our client.
Learning lessons as we went, our relationship has grown over the last four years as a result of our views on quality. We simply maintained that standards of cleanliness in stores should not be allowed to slip below acceptable levels.
Analysing foot flow, and then focusing our attention on a period of time to anticipate peak traffic in stores, we facilitated a cost saving of over 30% across the serviced estate – a saving that’s made a significant contribution to the client’s overall budget aims.