ASICS B2B
Both the B2B and B2C experiences have been going through tremendous change over the last 4 years. A top global initiative has been to consolidate the Americas, Europe, Japan and Australia onto the same backend platforms for both customers, sellers and buyers. For B2B this meant globally migrating the key regions from Hybris to Wayfarer. Wayfarer is an internal product of ASICS and managed through our Global IT solutions teams in Amsterdam and Australia. This project not only requires a lot of technical effort, but both the technical sales reps and the B2B customers have to go through training on the new systems.
The B2B team had not worked with a UX team up to this point. Most of the design and decision were done through Project Managers and Engineers working on the platform.
Initial Goals ( these change later on ):
Review the user expierences within Hybris and Wayfarer platforms to provide UI and golden path changes that could enable a “best of both” expierence for current and new users.
Provide a Mobile First Expierence for buyers to be able to use the platform from anywhere.
Visually Update the design system to match the new Sound Mind Sound Body look and feel exhibited in the B2C experience.
What is B2B for ASICS?
B2B is our global platform for bulk order wholesale goods. The primary customers are some of the largest sports and athleasure retail stores around the globe. Each major brand, Nike, Brooks, etc. has their own B2B expierence that these buyers use to purchase goods to sell in store and online.
B2B also includes our partners, like the network of Tennis Academy across Europe that are sponsored by AISCS.
B2B also includes the teams that ASICS sponsors, like the Samurai Japanese Baseball team. Team owners can created customized uniforms through the platform.
We also serve thousands of smaller shops who’s owners are play multiple rolls from buyer to cashier in their stores.
D2C is changing B2B
Within the performance sports industry, we’ve seen a tremendous shift to D2C spending and experience building. In 2019 Nike made a game changing move of pulling out from major resellers like Amazon to drive traffic to their own eCom and retail stores for increased profit and brand control.
With this change they stopped sending technical sales reps out to the smaller stores. Nike makes up to 70% of the profit of smaller stores - which has put a lot of stores at risk.
Many of our competitors are trying to do the same thing. Underarmor is likely to be the next one. That being said, ASICS is not in the position to follow Nike’s lead. We have less store coverage and still need the smaller stores to push profits in areas like Australia and the majority of America. (Currently we only have 6 retail stores in America)
Initial Discovery
Our Global IT team had been incrementally working on changes to the Wayfarer platform throughout the regional migrations. Most of these changes were coming directly from customer feedback. They didn’t have a UX team, so the solutions were usually engineering based and/or stop gaps to keep things working.
As the team was bringing the last region (the Americas) on the the Wayfarer platform, they started facilitating reviews of the experience to get feedback on future improvements and were to go for the next version of Wayfarer.
The Wayfarer Experience
Below are a number of the key screens within Wayfarer. There was light branding done 3 years ago when they had a front end enginer available to help with and ASICS-wide rebrand that was underway.
Something to React To
With a lot of the initial discovery workshops done by the business team, we started the UX/UI reviews between Hybris and the Wayfarer platforms. The discovery workshops were summarized into business requirements. At this point I was realizing that the requirements were mostly feature based and didn’t really look at what the experience “could be” if reworked without the current solutions in mind.
We started to wireframe the Product Detail Page based on a few assumptions that were surfacing from discussions with the business team.
The current solutions work well, we just need to combine some of the most used features from the 2 different platforms.
With less sellers working across regions with smaller stores, the PDP become a seller unto itself. The page should reflect as content as it can to help buyers understand the new shoes and get excited about them.
The experience should look and feel a lot more like the rebranded B2C experience.
It must be a mobile first requirement to make sure the experience is accessible anywhere.
All of these assumptions would be proven wrong with a new discovery workshop I kicked off at The Running Event, Austin. Details to come, but let’s take a look at where these wrong assumptions got us first.
Part of the process of reviewing the 2 very different navigations across Hybris and Wayfarer
This was an initial look at creating a more mobile friendly vertical bulk ordering panel. As you can see the imagery is also expanded to help the in-sale while the buyers are at home or in their store. The navigation is a combination of the most well used items between Hybris and Wayfarer. Overall the page is much closer to the B2C experience, bringing in strong elements of the new design system and revised ASICS color palette.
We were all very excited about this direction and were ready to try it out with some sellers and buyers to get reactions.
Discovery Round 2
In November 2021, “The Running Event” in Austin TX was being held. This is a one of the early selling opportunities for all performance sports brands for the Fall Winter 2022 season. Thousands of buyers show up and deals are made on the floor.
Within the conferences rooms on the 2nd floor - presentations are done to smaller groups showing off what’s coming in the next years. Buyers can hold samples and see the new catalogs in person.
This was a big opportunity to talk directly with the Buyers about our B2B expierence. So I flew down with the Technical sales reps and IT flew in from Amsterdam and Australia.
The Running Event, Austin TX
Every major brand comes to the running event and sets up their own exhibit. You can see an early glimpse at what will be in the market in the coming year.
I also go to hold a gold medal for the first time :)
Me and Discus Olympic Valarie Allman
Breakout Sessions
During the event, ASICS hosted 4 buyer sessions. These sessions are typically focused on showing attendees the next season of footwear and gear as well as any new technology as well as any new technology or changes we have for the legends.
Digging in.
We invited around 20 buyers each session to stay after the presentation. These smaller groups were used to do 15 minute intensives around the current B2B expierence. We did walkthroughs, looked at competitors and finally got to the core of what they were looking from the experience.
“I want to know what I can buy, how much, and when I can get it.”
— Seller at The Running Event Austin
The feedback we got was priceless. It completely changed the roadmap. The following are the key items we had to refocus on to make sure we were providing an experience that was going to give the most value to the end users.
New Requirements
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Make it Faster
The #1 problem with the ASICS selling experience was speed. Pages would take forever to load. Many buyer said they would do their ASICS purchases last because they knew it would take more time.
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I Don't Care About Mobile
No one we talked to made their purchases on mobile. All of them like the wider screen and seeming stability of the desktop experience for their buying tasks.
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My Process Starts Manually
Every company had their own process for preparing for a pre order. Most of them were using internal spreadsheet to manage inventory flows. Some were using paper and pen inventories. We wanted to make sure the experience reflected their view of quantity to be purchased.
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I don't even look at the Shoe.
By the time the pre-order starts, most buyers have seen a catalog or presentation of the shoes coming. They barely look at the image, but do care about the colors available. Nike sometimes doesn’t even show a shoe and they buy them anyways.
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Show Me Every Color
Currently we have each color as a separate Product Page. This is frustrating when trying to order many of a certain shoe. It also take a long time to go to each page to see which sizes are available.
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High Standards
Brooks has been doing an amazing job with their B2B experience. Everyone we talked to referred to it as the best in the industry and the new gold-standard for buying.
The New Approach
The follow is the new expierence as a WIP. We are completely changing the onboarding flow, navigation and the product detail pages. We start prototype reviews with buyers and sellers next week.
The new experience starts with an all new onboarding that helps buyers and sellers set the intention of their business from the beginning to get to the relevant content and basket faster.
It is then followed by a very new landing dashboard, where buyers and sellers have quick access to their baskets and different things that the would like to initiate.
The Navigation is streamlined - reduced to key actions and minimizing the multiple levels of CTAs and filtering. The new onboarding and dashboard remove the need for the extra filters and quick links, as the user will be shown what they want to see upon load.
The new PDP is streamlined for bulk ordering multiple colors at once. It become much closer to the physical and spreadsheet experience they enjoy and use for cataloging their other orders. Totals and units ordered are easy to see and navigate through.
