Case Study: ERIK’S achieves 50% workload reduction and 44% fewer customer contacts with VTEX geo-location

How geo-location transformed ERIK’S operational efficiency

ERIK’S, a leading US bike, board & ski retailer, faced a surge in online demand during COVID-19 and a simultaneous lack of inventory visibility: shoppers couldn’t see which stores stocked items until checkout, driving long trips, hundreds of customer calls and chats, and a 25% temporary increase in support staff. To solve this, ERIK’S turned to VTEX and its geo-location solution (the Shopper Location App and Product Availability App built on VTEX IO) to surface store-level availability earlier in the shopping journey.

VTEX’s solution uses anonymized IP/browser location (with customer consent) to show nearby inventory directly on shelf and product pages, eliminating manual POS lookups and unnecessary contacts. The month after launch communications per order dropped 44%, emails fell 20%, chats plunged 68%, and ERIK’S team’s workload fell by roughly 50%, significantly boosting operational efficiency.

ERIK’S

Graeme Bloor

Vice President of Digital and Information Technologies