What began as street vendors selling polo shirts in Lima has grown into a nationwide chain of stores: Topitop is now Peru's largest apparel manufacturer, and a strong example of vision that has allowed it to evolve and grow steadily — first in the offline world through physical stores, and now online.
In 2018, Aquilino Flores, Topitop's founder, announced the launch of the company's online store. Things didn't go as planned, though. Diego Reátegui, Head of eCommerce, explained that the agency hired to build the online store failed to meet implementation and launch deadlines, which led to losses. “We couldn't be ready for campaigns like Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and we needed to do something so we wouldn't miss the holiday season too, so as an emergency measure we brought in another platform. But within five months we'd already outgrown it — it wasn't letting us grow. I urgently needed a migration, a platform that would let me evolve and build partnerships down the road, with native functionality. That's how I landed on VTEX,” he said.
More and more companies are leaning toward a multicloud, all-as-a-service approach. IDC projections for 2022 suggest that more than half of companies in Latin America will integrate cloud management across public and private clouds through unified hybrid or multicloud tools and processes, drawn by the advantages of SaaS solutions: scalability, lower cost, faster implementation, migration flexibility, automatic updates, and security.
“Today, we don't regret the migration at all — we've seen sales growth of 219% in soles and just over 500% in contribution margin, comparing this past July alone to the same month last year. Local support and easy integration with our ERP have been extremely valuable to us, helping us avoid lost sales and stock shortages. The platform has performed excellently against our goals, which has given us the liquidity to push forward through this pandemic,” Reátegui explained. He noted that Topitop has rolled out features like smart checkout and cross-selling tools to keep raising average order value, along with promotions and bank partnerships. “Given these results, we're confident about becoming a marketplace by 2021,” he added.
Topitop isn't just working to become a unified commerce business — it's also focused on giving customers the best possible shopping experience. Understanding how its customers think, meeting their needs, and offering service anytime, anywhere are the company's core goals. “We're working hard to deliver a standout experience. Our site is now much more intuitive and fast, which makes checkout simple. We've also paired that with much more efficient home delivery, thanks to our own delivery fleet. All of this together lets us meet expectations and see happy customers,” he concluded.
Three months after the Peruvian brand made VTEX its strategic partner, Topitop has transformed and adapted to the changes — and the numbers show it has successfully consolidated its digital channel.
