ECOMMERCE CONSULTANT
Watchmaker Breo's eCommerce Site Looks Set to Accompany Rapid Retail Growth in 2012
Posted by Killian McAleese, 2nd November 2011
The party's happening literally all over the place for fashion forward brand Breo, and it's not stopping any time soon.
Famous for their affordable and stylish digital watches aimed at the 15 to 28 year-old market, and now headphones and accessories, this growing business has been getting about half of its revenue shifting stock through airline onboard duty-free sales with the rest through the likes of Play.com, Amazon, John Lewis, Asos.com, Red5and Fitsense.co.uk.
2012
Breo is owned by Tyko Trading, a Dundee-based business founded to manage the Breo brand but with a strong view to developing new ones.
The concept was launched in 2008 by entrepreneur Rob Morrison with £6000 behind it. But if the rumours currently circulating around the business community and press are true, the high street is next on the list, with branded stores on the agenda for 2012.
eCommerce at Breo
But being Open Plus, we couldn't just sit back and not ask what's going on from an ecommerce point of view! What's Breo, a high-growth business, doing in that growth sector of growth sectors? As it happens, a lot. From our point of view, it looks as though the business is well set up for its own online growth to parallel the other channels.
With a vibrant site by Dundee's MTC Media, Breo's ecommerce arm is characterised with a design excellence and originality equal to their range of products: "distinctive, colourful and fun". The site is straightforward and stylish and somehow manages to maintain a youthful, playful edge while avoiding that toe-curling 'down with the kids' condescension.
Browsing Stock
Stock is very easily browsed through "Time," "Audio" and "Accessories" pages and the site allows shoppers to view products in various colours. A trade portal also facilitates wholesale customers' transactions.
Breo.com is accompanied by the business's Ramblings blog which, as an online retailing blog, manages to maintain the necessary brevity, coherence and design savvy, showcasing products and highlighting promotions and events, such as Breo's attendance at the Britain and Ireland's Next Top Model live show.
A predictably very presentable Facebook store also sells the Breo range of products and the enticement of special offers for Facebook fans has already earned the page more than 5000 likes.
The Future
If you want to know where all this is going, the business is setting up a Hong Kong base and is expected to turn over around £8m in 2011. Remarkably, the Breo team has apparently slowed its growth despite the unbelievable development from £6k to £8m in three years. 2012, however, is expected to experience as much as a 50% increase in turnover.
Obviously Breo are conscious that despite all this a limited product range of a distinctive style has the potential to fall out of fashion as quickly as it came in. But that doesn't overly trouble Rob Morrison, who is working towards building Breo as a long-term brand with a widening product range.
Good luck to them!
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