Hirmer Case Study

HIRMER in Munich is home to the world’s largest men’s-only fashion house. The company also offers its high-quality goods through a web shop. With Melissa’s solutions for address validation, HIRMER’s online store was able to successfully go international.

The HIRMER group brings together the tradition of a third-generation owner-operated Munich family company with the dynamism of a modern corporate group. As well as its original store, HIRMER offers fashion for big and tall men from many top brands on its website and in 15 branches across Germany and Austria. In order to encourage global sales, the website has been available in Czech, Polish and English since 2016. “Customer service is incredibly important to us. Our specialists are here to help with online shopping and to answer all kinds of questions about men’s clothing and our ordering processes”, said Markus Heitkamp, Head of Application Development at HIRMER.

“With the internationalisation strategy that we have introduced, we aim to guarantee that same level of service for customers abroad and get their orders to them as quickly as possible – just like our customers in Germany”, Heitkamp adds.

 Because Melissa checks and corrects addresses as they are entered into the online shop, we can ensure that our customers get their orders promptly, which increases their level of satisfaction.
MARKUS HEITKAMP, HEAD OF APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT AT HIRMER

TIMELY DELIVERIES AND BETTER SERVICE IMPROVE CUSTOMER SATISFACTION

However, HIRMER’s online shop and its connected systems were not set up to handle non-German addresses. The company was also initially unable to check and display the various address formats that are possible in other countries. There are over 100 different address formats worldwide, structured in all sorts of ways. The town or city name may go before or after the postal code – or sometimes on a new line entirely. In some countries, it is essential to specify a recipient’s state or province in order for a delivery to reach them safely. Each country also has different local postage requirements to comply with. The printout on the address label therefore absolutely must match the country’s official format. “Incorrect or undeliverable delivery addresses delay and disrupt our logistical processes”, explained Heitkamp. “This results in delayed deliveries to customers – something we always want to avoid, as it negatively impacts customer satisfaction.”

With this in mind, the company sought a solution it could use to confirm the accuracy of foreign addresses. It needed to offer the option of integration via a web service interface, in order to make it easy to implement into the existing infrastructure and to enable seamless cooperation with other systems. The solution also needed to support many different address formats; allow secure, encrypted processing (via HTTPS) and deliver good results when validating addresses.

While evaluating the market, HIRMER discovered Melissa’s solutions, which are able to validate international addresses both in real-time and in batch. Following intensive testing, HIRMER decided to implement Melissa’s international address validation solution in 2018. Thanks to Melissa’s excellent documentation and support, the integration process was swift and trouble-free.

ACCURATE ADDRESSES IMPROVE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

These products come into play at two points: when checking out in the online shop, and when validating and correcting delivery addresses in the ERP system. “Because Melissa checks and corrects addresses as they are entered into the online shop, we can ensure that our customers get their orders promptly, which increases their level of satisfaction”, said Heitkamp. “Moreover, good data – which is to say, valid data – let us address customers on a personalised, individual level, and improve our conversion and response rates.”

FAST, ON-TIME DELIVERY THANKS TO ADDRESS VALIDATION

Over 100,000 addresses ranging across 40 countries in Europe and North America are checked every year. By introducing Melissa’s solution, HIRMER was able to reduce its average delivery times for international customers by approximately one day. HIRMER is also very satisfied with Melissa’s customer service in terms of its speed and specialist support. Heitkamp sums it up thus: “With Melissa’s solutions, our online store was able to successfully go international. These solutions remain a key component of our ongoing expansion today."