The Situation
Like all big brands, ASICS has long understood the importance of building a strong e-commerce presence. As consumers continually seek new ways to interact with their favorite manufacturers, direct-to-consumer (DTC) channels are key. But in an industry where wholesale and resale played such a central role for so long, embracing new methods on marketplaces also meant coming up with new strategies.
“Organization was an issue,” says E-Commerce Marketplace Manager Rebekah Darsch. “We had a large product catalogue. One person managing that every day was unsustainable.”
There were other challenges, too. Especially when it came to consolidating multiple websites into one big-brand URL.
So the team decided to ramp up its efforts with Rithum.
The Solution
For a while, ASICS had been using the Rithum e-commerce platform to manage marketplaces such as eBay and Rakuten. But as the ASICS DTC business expanded, it became clear that more support would be needed to tackle two crucial areas of need: marketplace management and digital marketing.
After visiting Rithum headquarters, the ASICS team decided to expand to Managed Services for Marketplaces and Managed Services for Digital Marketing.
“We met with the team at Rithum, our account manager and other team members,” says Kyle Boucher, Senior Manager, Demand Generation. “We spent our time learning what Rithum could offer us.”
It didn’t take long for ASICS to decide that leveraging the company’s marketplace and digital marketing specialists “just made sense.”
“The big piece for our search program was to improve the way we were messaging our customers… based on age, gender and keyword interest,” explains Boucher. “And there was only so much I had the ability to do when I did it on my own.”
Darsch echoed his sentiments on the marketplace side.
“Just being able to use Rithum’s platform to help us with the Amazon integration to pull in orders and sales helped us grow quickly,” she says.
The Results
So, what happened next? ASICS’ Demand Generation Manager describes it best:
“We just kept crushing goal after goal.”
Thanks to Rithum successfully launching them on Amazon, ASICS reports that its year-over-year revenue growth shot up 72%.
ASICS’ digital marketing campaigns were equally rewarding. After setting an original goal for return on ad spend (ROAS), the team watched the actual number climb to a new record.
“Once we partnered more with Rithum and optimized our programs, we ended up with an impressive ROAS at the end of the year,” says Boucher. “In terms of revenue, we finished with 41% above where we were [a year ago].”
That’s not even the best part.
In the five-day span between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday, ASICS watched year-over-year growth swell by 150%. According to ASICS, it was the company’s most successful Cyber 5 holiday selling season ever.
“We more than doubled our demand, which is incredible,” Darsch says. “And 81% of our marketplace revenue during Cyber 5 came from Amazon. We were so excited because that was a new marketplace Rithum helped us to launch on.”
“Working with Rithum,” adds Boucher, “We were able to do a lot of things during the holidays including features and promotions.”
“[Without Rithum], our program would be much different,” Boucher says. “We would’ve had to find a lot of alternative methods to do what we do. We’re currently advertising across three different search engines. There would be no real way we could manage that. There wouldn’t be much of a program without Rithum’s robust platform.”
Darsch agrees.
“I can’t even imagine what it would be like without Rithum,” she says. “I would definitely recommend Rithum to other sellers, especially those that are just starting out on marketplaces. Rithum is not only a service to help with our feeds but also a resource on how to sell on marketplaces and how to grow.”
