Following the closure of its UK loyalty programme A-List ASOS says it will evolve its loyalty offering to be more global and to give focus to its Premier Delivery option, which it said its customers have said that they love. The number of premier customers, who pay £9.95 a year for unlimited next day delivery, increased by 53% to 1.3 million for the year ended 31st August 2018.
Revealing its year-end results this week ASOS said that delivery and distribution were key to its success and that is has made further improvements to the delivery proposition globally this year. That includes the launch of new delivery methods, promise improvements, extended cut-off times and improved coverage across the world.
The retail group launched same-day delivery into two more European cities, Birmingham and Berlin, and extended next day cut-off times for EU orders to 4pm. Click & Collect was launched into Russia, with over 3,000 locations, and extended in Finland, Sweden and Poland.
Following a successful pilot in the first half, a new returns experience was rolled out to 18 countries globally in the second half of the year. This feature is integrated within ‘My Account’ and improves the returns experience by allowing sight and status tracking of returned orders as well as early payment of refunds.
ASOS is also continuing to invest in its Euro hub to bring efficiency levels closer to its UK Hub in Barnsley. It said the efficiency of the facility will improve significantly as it moves into the next financial year and that the phase two extension was progressing to plan with the automated storage system now more than 95% complete and testing and commissioning well underway. The retailer said good progress was also being made on the new warehouse management system which will be installed this year.
The financial year also saw the successful completion of phase one of ASOS’ new US hub in Atlanta which will enable it to access future delivery cost savings. The one million square foot warehouse in Atlanta is now live for both inbound and outbound despatch, with plans to ramp towards 100% local fulfilment for the US market over the coming year. Although equipped with a greater level of mechanisation than in the company’s other warehouses – including conveyers for transporting product to pickers – ASOS said the facility will operate as a manual operation during the coming financial year before automation benefits begin to accrue from FY20 onwards.
In the UK the capacity increase project at Barnsley completed on schedule, which added an additional 2 million units of stockholding capability to the UK hub. It has been supplemented with the opening of a multi-use facility at Doncaster which as well as providing 3 million units of incremental stockholding capacity will also undertake returns processing.
Image credit: ASOS
