Peek & Cloppenburg KG Düsseldorf: Leading the omnichannel evolution in style with Google Cloud
About Peek & Cloppenburg KG Düsseldorf
With 155 physical stores in 15 countries and six online shops in four countries, omnichannel fashion retailer Peek & Cloppenburg Düsseldorf offers high-quality styles for everyone, with a mix of own and exclusive brands.
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About freiheit.com
freiheit.com builds large-scale software projects across markets and verticals, from ecommerce to healthcare.
The Peek & Cloppenburg Düsseldorf fashion group uses Google Cloud to build an omnichannel platform from scratch, combining the strengths of its online and in-store channels, and aims to be the leading multi-brand omnichannel retailer for fashion in Europe by 2026.
Google Cloud results
- Increases customer satisfaction by merging online and in-store journeys for a seamless and connected experience
- Drives revenue growth with smart recommendations and personalized marketing via Google Cloud-powered Data Mesh
- Frees up time and resources for real value creation by automating low-level infrastructure maintenance and scaling
- Boosts innovation by making experimentation easy, fast, and affordable with scalable managed infrastructure on Google Cloud
Revenue growth with smart recommendations and personalized marketing
When Peek & Cloppenburg, with its headquarter in Düsseldorf, was founded in 1900, the latest styles from Paris were starting to sweep through Europe and fashion was ready for a revolution. Over a century later, many different trends have come and gone, but Peek & Cloppenburg Düsseldorf has remained a staple in the European fashion world.
With 155 stores in 15 countries and multiple international online shops, Peek & Cloppenburg Düsseldorf fashion group sells high-grade fashion for all ages and genders. Its portfolio includes own and exclusive brands, ranging from premium fashion to everyday clothing. Above all, quality is the thread that runs through the company’s clothing.
"We believe the future is omnichannel. Instead of separating our stores and online shops, we want to connect online and in-store shopping experiences to make them more personal and convenient for our customers. And that’s what we’re doing with Google Cloud."
—Dr. Sven Bernhardt, Chief Digital & Customer Officer, Peek & CloppenburgLooking sharp in an omnichannel world
But quality isn’t just about materials: it’s about meeting and exceeding customer expectations throughout the shopping experience, in-store and online. For Peek & Cloppenburg Düsseldorf, these different channels can perfectly complement each other: "We believe the future is omnichannel," says Dr. Sven Bernhardt, Chief Digital & Customer Officer, Peek & Cloppenburg Düsseldorf. "Instead of separating our stores and online shops, we want to connect online and in-store shopping experiences to make them more personal and convenient for our customers. And that’s what we’re doing with Google Cloud."
By catering to shoppers' preferences, Peek & Cloppenburg Düsseldorf's omnichannel approach makes the customer experience more personal, efficient, and fun. When it comes to orders and returns, for example, shoppers can combine online and in-store channels, depending on their current needs. Both on- and offline, they'll receive tailored suggestions and personalized support based on their interests and purchase history. With a 360° customer view, Peek & Cloppenburg Düsseldorf will also be able to offer memorable new in-store experiences to reinvent its brick-and-mortar-business for the digital age.
Any omnichannel solution needs a sophisticated technical infrastructure. Back in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the need for omnichannel solutions, Peek & Cloppenburg Düsseldorf was still hosting many applications, including its SAP landscape, on own data centers. That's when the team started looking to migrate some of these core applications to cloud solutions that could also help support the technical foundations for the company's omnichannel future.
Building a data-driven cloud environment
The fashion retailer decided to migrate to Google Cloud for three main reasons: "We wanted state-of-the-art microservice infrastructure and a data-driven environment, at a competitive price," says Vahid Gharavi, Managing Director of Fashion Digital for Peek & Cloppenburg Düsseldorf's IT company. "With Google Kubernetes Engine, BigQuery, and others, Google Cloud offers some of the best solutions in the market and it came out on top in our cost-benchmarking as well."
Parallel to the migration to SAP on Google Cloud, Peek & Cloppenburg Düsseldorf teamed up with freiheit.com to start designing its new cloud-native omnichannel platform in 2021. "We wanted to achieve two things in one go," says Gharavi. "On top of building our new omnichannel platform, we also wanted to create an excellent engineering organization to be able to build and run our software ourselves. Our partner freiheit.com has ample experience with both and was a real asset in helping us to achieve this quickly and with the highest quality standards."
Stefan Richter, Founder and Head of Engineering of freiheit.com, adds: "We really see ourselves as enablers for Peek & Cloppenburg Düsseldorf. That's why we supported the omnichannel project with several teams, from our lead engineering team that's doing most of the actual development, to integrated teams that include engineers from both organizations. So, we're enabling Peek & Cloppenburg Düsseldorf to seamlessly take over from us once the platform is live and working."
"If we wanted to run this omnichannel platform ourselves, we would have had to hire a considerable amount of highly talented operations professionals. Besides saving us money, Google Cloud makes it so much easier for our teams to get the infrastructure they want on the scale that they need."
—Vahid Gharavi, Managing Director of Fashion DigitalMerging online and in-store for a seamless shopping experience
Peek & Cloppenburg Düsseldorf's new omnichannel platform runs on a microservice architecture using Google Kubernetes Engine. The BigQuery-powered Data Mesh makes data more accessible, secure, and of higher quality across the organization, leveraging Data Catalog to discover data sources from product teams across the company. Reports are gathered on Looker dashboards that pull data from all available sources and make it easier to explore insights for teams across the company.
The result is a robust data foundation that combines information on customer needs, engagement, and preferences, with information on the company's product portfolio, stock, and sales volumes. All this makes shopping across Peek & Cloppenburg Düsseldorf's different sales channels a more integrated experience. Customers, for example, can easily have items bought in-store shipped home, or return items bought online in a store of their choice.
"We’re always trying to make it as easy and convenient as possible for our customers to buy and return orders at Peek & Cloppenburg Düsseldorf," says Dr. Bernhardt. "With our Google Cloud-powered omnichannel platform, we can combine the strength of each sales channel to greatly improve the overall shopping experience."
Personalized recommendations, which have long helped Peek & Cloppenburg Düsseldorf's customers find the right items online, can now make in-store shopping experiences more unique as well.
"Our Google Cloud-powered omnichannel platform is creating a more seamless shopping experience for our customers, which, in turn, makes us more profitable as a business," says Dr. Bernhardt. "By attracting customers with smart, data-driven marketing, and retaining them with our personalized offering, we're aiming to be the leading multi-brand omnichannel retailer for fashion in Europe by 2026."
"Together with Google Cloud and freiheit.com, we're ushering in the next generation of retail. We aim to be Europe's leading omnichannel fashion retailer by 2026, and with the technological foundations in place, we’re well on our way to hitting our targets."
—Dr. Sven Bernhardt, Chief Digital & Customer Officer, Peek & CloppenburgUshering in the next generation of retail
As the technical foundation for this omnichannel transformation, Google Cloud delivers the necessary speed and reliability to provide an intuitive online shopping experience. And in case of unprecedented peaks in traffic, the solution can scale easily. Without the burden of manual server maintenance, Peek & Cloppenburg Düsseldorf's teams are free to focus their energy on more value-generating work.
"If we wanted to run this omnichannel platform ourselves, we would have had to hire a considerable amount of highly talented operations professionals," says Gharavi. "Besides saving us money, Google Cloud makes it so much easier for our teams to get the infrastructure they want on the scale that they need. It really helps us spend more time on more meaningful issues, such as improving the customer experience."
Ultimately, Peek & Cloppenburg Düsseldorf's omnichannel strategy is all about empowering customers and the key to a long-lasting customer relationship is data. With Google Cloud, the German fashion retailer is becoming more data-driven and, in turn, agile, able to test new ideas quickly, and better understand what makes shoppers tick.
"Together with Google Cloud and freiheit.com, we're ushering in the next generation of retail," says Dr. Bernhardt. "We aim to be Europe’s leading omnichannel fashion retailer by 2026, and with the technological foundations in place, we're well on our way to hitting our targets. And that’s helping us to shape the future for Peek & Cloppenburg Düsseldorf fashion group."
Tell us your challenge. We're here to help.
Contact us
About Peek & Cloppenburg KG Düsseldorf
With 155 physical stores in 15 countries and six online shops in four countries, omnichannel fashion retailer Peek & Cloppenburg Düsseldorf offers high-quality styles for everyone, with a mix of own and exclusive brands.
About freiheit.com
freiheit.com builds large-scale software projects across markets and verticals, from ecommerce to healthcare.