Norli
Norli is Norway's largest bookstore chain with 180+ stores across Norway and a revenue of 1.9 billion NOK (including franchises). Over the past five years, the chain has undergone an extensive digital transformation where its physical stores and digital commerce now form a unified omnichannel strategy that has proven highly successful.
When Norli reached out, they wanted to strengthen the performance of their online store and explore how to leverage the advantages of their physical presence in a digital strategy.
In just 4 months we had launched an MVP of their new online store based on Adobe Commerce, giving Norli a strong foundation for further development and optimization.
Over the past 8 years we have had a highly active collaboration, and Norli has delivered a range of compelling initiatives. They have a highly successful Click & Collect solution, a loyalty club spanning both physical and digital, they have adopted Autostore, and we have launched new online store views for both B2B and Mamut sales, to name a few.
In 2022 we completed several new initiatives, including a new UX process, migrating the solution to a headless architecture using our Harmony Storefront, and adopting Dynamic Yield, the market's leading solution for personalization.
Forward stocking locations
One of the truly significant wins we have achieved together is the introduction of forward stocking locations, also referred to as a ship-from-store strategy.
The book industry has traditionally operated so that all new online orders trigger a purchase from the publishers' central warehouse, which then ships the item to the end customer.
In the pre-project with Norli we identified this as an opportunity to use existing in-store inventory more efficiently rather than making new purchases.
We developed a solution where online store orders automatically check inventory levels in selected stores. If a store near the customer has the item in stock, the order is sent to that store. This reduces existing inventory rather than triggering new purchases.
Store staff are notified that a new order has arrived, they process it in the same system, with a solution in place for shipping and packing, and the item is sent directly from the store to the end customer.
The results
In 2021, John Thomasgaard (CEO) of Norli told E24 about the restructuring and ecommerce push that gave the chain a record result in 2020:
"We were a bit late to ecommerce, but we needed time to figure out how to position ourselves. Now we have most things in place and have the most profitable model in the market," says Thomasgaard.
"Ecommerce now accounts for around 30 percent of sales, and this is where growth will come from in the years ahead."
"Forward stocking locations are particularly suited to books, as staff often have time during the day to process online orders, and the volumes per book are too small for it to make sense to have all titles available in an automated picking system."
"There is no doubt that margins are far better when selling a puzzle from the main warehouse than from a store. While the opposite can be true for a book. At the same time we see the effect of a healthy and profitable store network working alongside ecommerce."
The positive development has given the chain the opportunity to build a significantly larger in-house digital team, making them a highly competent and exciting client to work with.
We immediately experienced a strong increase in conversion when we switched to Magento 2 with Klarna Checkout, developed by PearlConvert. PearlConvert's proprietary OMS solution enables us to organize logistics in an entirely new and flexible way, by combining distribution from warehouse and store. The team at PearlConvert is a great, inspiring, and solution-oriented group that we work very well with.
- John Thomasgaard, CEO of Norli
