Young Soles

Young Soles is a family-run, high quality children’s footwear brand that blends retro-cool with classic British heritage styles, using the highest-end materials. Stuart Anderson, CEO of Young Soles, sat with us to discuss our collaboration.

Young Soles was founded by its Creative Director Louise Shill who started the brand after she had her first child and realizing there was a gap in the market for well-designed, good quality children’s footwear that not only looks great but has foot health at its heart. As a footwear designer with many years of experience, she set-up the brand over ten years ago and the rest as they say is history...

Ten years later, Young Soles is a global brand selling wholesale and directly to retailers and consumers.

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With a brand ethos to evoke childhood memories, Young Soles footwear is designed in the UK, manufactured in Europe and sold worldwide. With such a large global audience this brings its own set of unique logistical challenges.

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As the brand's CEO, Stu has a broad scope and is involved in every aspect of the process.

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As a family run business it is important to be able to wear many different hats. As CEO I oversee everything from marketing to logistics to key accounts and sales. Looking after the strategic aspects of the business it is important that I see where we can do things better.

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Enter Swap, the ecommerce OS evolving Young Soles’ DTC business.

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Automation is very important to us. We have a small team, and we must maximise our time to ensure we are using it in the most effective way possible. We have previously worked with a few different partners for UK and international deliveries and returns. But we were unable to find anyone who could deliver all our requirements. This led us to have different partners and portals for different services and an inconsistent and unpleasant experience for our customers.Enter Swap.

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We had worked with the Swap team previously on returns and were very happy to hear that they had added capabilities for outbound and cross-border shipping that paired with their already excellent returns service and portal. We thought “at last, someone who actually offers what we actually need.”

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In the past, other partners turned their business into a black box.

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One requirement of working with many logistics and software partners is that they take control of your online payments. When you run a small business, this makes it tough to keep on top of what money is going where, who and how, and what the efficiencies are with each tool. One of the excellent features of Swap is that it gave us back control of our online payments, which was great. We’re using Swap’s preferred shipping rates, which are brilliant, straight out of our warehouse.

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We also like the fact that it is a straightforward plug-and-play into our Shopify platform. Swap have invested a lot of time to knows our customer, which is important to us and not something that can be said of many other providers of this type of solution.

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Swap helps brands scale on their terms and add products as needed.

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Recycling is something that we have been looking at for some time. As a responsible business, it is important that we can take responsibility for the life of the shoe beyond when it is sold. In the UK alone, about 76 million pairs of children’s shoes end up in a landfill each year.

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Whilst exploring some of the other Swap offerings, we noticed that there was a recycling option already baked into the system we already use. This tool will enable us to build the recycling solution we have been looking for.

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One of the things we like about Swap is that they are progressive thinkers beyond the current solutions. You always ask us “what else would be helpful for you”. I talked to Jack and the CS team about other solutions you’re developing. We want to partner with businesses who want to grow and help you grow.

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Life before and after Swap can feel like night and day.

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The solution we previously had did not enable us to exchange or return for credit. The Swap returns platform has exchanges and credits baked in. These two features immediately made a difference and are great services for retaining revenue, especially for people returning internationally. With children’s shoes, people tend to size up or size down, so this becomes a huge value-added feature.

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Customer service is key to a consumer facing business like Young Soles.

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A big problem we had with previous suppliers was customer support. If a customer of ours had a question about their shipment, it is important for us to be able to respond to them as quickly as possible with the right information.

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With previous suppliers we would send an enquiry to the help desk and simply never hear back from them. This is frustrating for us and for our customer. As far as the customer is concerned, they bought their shoes from you and if you cannot get back to them promptly and explain what’s going on with their shipment, it reflects poorly on the brand. Timely and informed responses are mission-critical, especially if you position yourself as a brand that prides itself on its quality. You must be able to provide that end-to-end service.

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With Swap, I know I can go to Jack, Head of Account Management, who will point me in the right direction and get me to a solution quickly.

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The all-in-one ecommerce OS that can help Young Soles to the next level.

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We have nothing but good things to say about our experience with Swap and the product and service they provide. We are excited to grow with them and use more services as they become available.

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The children’s fashion industry is a tight-knit bunch. I am so confident in Swap that I’ve already recommended them to a few people, putting my reputation on the line!

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