DeBra's Finds Its Best Fit with BigCommerce

Recognising a demand for personalised service, professional fitting and greater offering for fuller figured women, Debra Kinney, founder and owner of DeBra’s, launched the women’s undergarments, lingerie and swimwear company, in 2000. After years of nurturing a dedicated following with a physical storefront in Sydney, DeBra's has experienced significant growth over the past 21 years and the business has collectively matured both offline and online.

DeBra prioritises size as its main point of difference and the product range is as diverse as it is adaptable. Adopting a customer first approach in its product offering, DeBra's chief objective remains focused on providing women with a bra that fits, moves and moulds to the brand’s unique physicality and personality. This ethos highlighted a shared vision that aligned perfectly with BigCommerce, subsequently paving a formidable foundation for growth on the platform.

DeBra's introduced its online storefront in 2013. In 2019, the brand endured the loss of its second store from storm damage and the decision was made to refrain from re-opening. Alternatively, Debra made the move to focus her energy on her storm-proof digital strategy and concentrate her brick and mortar offering to the sole Sydney store.

CHALLENGE

Prior to BigCommerce, the business was using Magento 1 Community. “Over recent years, our online business surpassed our expectations. Needless to say, we wanted a platform that we could advance with, that would facilitate further growth in the future”, expressed Kinney. After a lot of research and engaging Reign Ecommerce, who conducted a comprehensive analysis of DeBra's online operations, the company found BigCommerce was the best option for its business, logistics and marketing needs. One mandatory requirement that BigCommerce was able to satisfy was the ability to have over 100 product variants.

SOLUTION

BigCommerce: Foundation for flexible input to deliver greater output

When looking for a new platform, Kinney knew exactly what she was after. Being customer-centric, her main focus was to hone in on shopper behaviour and to visualise this data quickly and effectively. With it’s unequivocal open API functionality, BigCommerce allowed DeBra’s to integrate autonomously with other technologies to help advance its overall marketing and customer experience.

Kinney maintained that, “This unique flexibility with leading technology solutions assured me that we were servicing our customer needs with the best resources and tools available to us; with each integration chiefly focused on its respective expertise and functionality.” 

Coming from a traditional retailer, DeBra’s wanted to ensure it could provide women with a digital experience equivalent to an in-store fitting. This technology allowed the brand to better analyse and respond to online visitors and attribute a large part of its growth to this consideration. 

Kinney went on to say that, “We recognised early on that direct marketing was a major force. As such, we wanted a system that would integrate seamlessly with a robust email solution in parallel to our media channels, giving us actionable insights into the performance of these various channels. BigCommerce was again the right fit.”

RESULTS

Not a one-size-fits-all solution

Ultimately, the decision to move to BigCommerce was sealed by the diversity of applications available and the seamless integrations that made the offering so strong. DeBra’s was able to connect its point of sale (POS) system, RetailExpress, which made the transition easy from a day-to-day management perspective. DeBra’s was also sold by the unlimited capabilities with product variants offered through the platform. “With our extensive size offering under any one style, BigCommerce held a unique selling point that resonated with us on a functional and foundational level, channeling our inherent shared ethos of variation and flexibility.”

Kinney furthered this comment in saying, “As COVID-19 entered the retail realm, our online operations changed to meet the higher demand of women shopping online. We looked at new channels to engage with our customers online, including the introduction of a virtual fitting service. Our focus was to position our in-store staff as virtual assistants, ensuring that each digital fitting was delivered by an experienced professional. Live chat facilitated this objective and we were proud to have BigCommerce at the helm during this period of transition.”

LOOKING AHEAD

Building on momentum

Building on this momentum, the brand is pacing forward and will be looking to expand internationally with the rollout of BigCommerce’s multi-store functionality. “We hope our partnership with BigCommerce will be long-term and look forward to growing our business alongside BigCommerce’s latest technological innovations for ecommerce,” Kinney said.

Published: August 2021