How Reima Clothing is Giving Consumers a Voice While Collecting Better & Continuous Insights
Reima is a Finnish Clothing brand with a global presence in the functional kids-wear category. Their primary goal is to encourage children to enjoy movement, and the business idea revolves around producing good quality wardrobe for active children ages 0 to 12. International markets make up for 80% of their sales, and the core strategy of Reima is digitalization. Net sales over their digital channels accounted for 14% of total sales.
In this article, we will take a look at how Reima uses a community platform to give consumers a voice and collect better and continuous insights.
Meet Reima’s Community Management Team
Anna Keningi has been at Reima for over 4 years, working as a project lead, consumer insights, and Community Manager for Reima Lab (the name of their online community). Anna leads community management and presents the results to marketing and other teams. Anna is also responsible for the content on their CMNTY Platform.
Antti Hanninen is a Consumer Data Analyst, and he’s been at Reima for over two years. He’s part of the digital development team, as well as web and consumer analytics. Antti supports CMNTY Platform from the backend and the data side.
The Challenge (Giving the Consumer a Voice)
Being a clothing brand, Reima wants to be as consumer-driven as possible. For that reason the team wanted to collect feedback from consumers. “We thought that one-way of getting the consumer’s voice would be through this feedback collecting and online community,” Anna said.
Besides collecting feedback, they needed help for targeting loyal members to keep them engaged in the brand. Antti added: “We also want to test our new ideas or get them from customers and get members involved in the development process. That are the main reasons for using an online community.”
Reima’s products are seasonal apparel with Winter and Autumn clothing being their stronger seasons. The Spring and Summer collection is smaller, and Reima needed a tool to expand and grow their brand for the whole year around active kids. But Reima also wants to expand to the US market at some point. Anna explained how to find out about consumer values in different markets: “An online community helps us to bring people from different countries together. We’re growing globally, and it is important to get feedback from other countries as well.“
The Solution
Reima used another tool before CMNTY, as well as Facebook Groups, but both of these solutions weren’t as good nor user-friendly enough. They needed a better solution.
“The user experience and designs were big drivers for us compared to the previous platform we had…” Anna pointed out. “Mobile friendliness also was essential.“
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A strong Gamification engine for points-collecting and a webshop where members could spend their points were unavailable before. With CMNTY Platform, Anna has found that these functions are an excellent way to keep customers that participate in the questionnaires interested and engaged.
“The rewarding system and webshop within the platform free our hands from researching who answers our questions,” added Antti. He also complimented the look and UX of the platform.
The Questionnaire feature was essential for Reima’s global marketing expansion. For instance, they tried to find out whether central and southern Europe is aware of the Moomins children brand, which has a popular book and TV series. “How well this brand is known in each country affects how we will market these products,” Antti explained.
They also tested some product features on how people will respond to Anti-Mosquito clothing that is made with non-toxic plant extract. “We can use the feedback in marketing, and we can answer all the questions in our campaign,” Antti said.
The Impact
Reima made the transition to CMNTY with ease and got many significant benefits from the platform. Anna and Antti shared what they gained the most using their new community platform.
#1 Agile, Efficient & Ongoing Insights
Reima is continuously working on improving their online shop, so getting quick feedback on features is helping them adjust to meet customer desires. The team got useful insights from basic surveys, but forum and journal studies were a great additional to the regular quant insights. “A community is a more agile and quick way to get feedback continuously, not just quarterly or yearly,” said Anna.
#2 Increased Communication with Customers
Using online journals, the team sent a couple of gloves for testing, and the members reported their impressions in their private journal within the platform.
The team also shares news updates with members every month to keep them informed. Anna explained, “I think it’s important to have at least some level of communication about the results we got from the platform.”
Using these methods, customers see how their work is affecting Reima, which encourages future engagement.
#3 More Ways to Give Back
Reima started their rewards program with lottery tickets, through a monthly lottery and one product. That way, they could control the expenses of the project. The team then tested real product prizes through CMNTY’s webshop feature.
Products on the webshop have been popular, and Anna shared: “It’s nice to have some variation for members to choose their reward.” Reima sends rewards to members as vouchers to use on their store website.
#4 A More Unified Marketing & Insights Strategy
Anna and Antti cooperate with internal Marketing, Digital Development, Product, Retail, and other teams, and they all participate in the development of research subjects. It helps all of them work towards their common business objectives in the end.
They also surveyed users about the Lab and received positive feedback. Anna concluded: “People are excited and interested by Reima Lab, both internally as externally.”