MuleSoft, provider of the leading platform for building application networks, announced that Lane Crawford, Asia’s leading luxury department store, has selected MuleSoft’s Anypoint Platform™ to power its industry-leading omnichannel customer experience, including the launch of its new mobile app in early 2017.
For more than 165 years, Lane Crawford has been a leader in luxury retail in Asia, and offers the largest designer portfolio showcasing more than 1,000 international brands. Since 2011, Lane Crawford has significantly invested in digital technology to become a luxury lifestyle destination across all channels becoming the first luxury omni-channel fashion retailer in Greater China.
Anypoint Platform Enables Lane Crawford To Bring Luxury Shopping at Consumers’ Fingertips
To continue to advance the omnichannel experience Lane Crawford pioneered in Greater China, the company selected MuleSoft’s Anypoint Platform to launch its first mobile shopping app. With MuleSoft’s full lifecycle API management capabilities, Lane Crawford built an API integration layer to expose access to the CRM and eCommerce applications. Exposing these systems through APIs enabled Lane Crawford to create a data-as-a-service platform to orchestrate 360-degree views of customers and inventory, such as up-to-date loyalty balances and shopping history. The same APIs are leveraged across digital channels including their new mobile app, website, and WeChat, one of China’s most popular text and voice messaging apps.
“Lane Crawford is constantly at the forefront of retail technology. We are dedicated to helping our customers to shop anytime, anywhere,“ Sebastian Picardo, Deputy President, Lane Crawford. “MuleSoft’s API-led connectivity approach is an important step in our digital investment and commitment to offering our customers the seamless shopping experience whether in-store, online at lanecrawford.com or through mobile”.
“As we strive to build a world-class omnichannel retail platform, we need to be agile and identify the best technologies in the market. We are on track and will deliver a five-year technology blueprint to help Lane Crawford become a digital-enabled brand,” said Picardo.
Lane Crawford’s new mobile application built on Anypoint Platform will be a critical revenue driver for the business, as China’s shown a remarkably high demand for mobile shopping with more than $500 billion of all eCommerce purchases in China made on mobile devices according to eMarketer.
An Application Network Will Accelerate Innovation for Lane Crawford
The launch of its mobile application is just the start of the developments that Lane Crawford plans to launch as a result of creating an application network. Lane Crawford has set up an innovation team and is building out a repository of APIs in a center for enablement to maximise IT reuse. Future projects will focus on expanding WeChat capabilities and creating internal applications to increase operational efficiency.
“By building an application network, we’ve relieved the IT bottleneck that previously hindered our ability to innovate. Modernising our legacy systems with APIs has reduced our time spent on IT maintenance and left us with a repository of reusable assets we can use to launch future business initiatives faster,” Picardo continued. “We’re excited to continue to deliver even more innovative customer experiences in the future.”