T.M. Lewin.
HighCohesion helped T.M. Lewin rise from the ashes and navigate a tricky turnaround to smash its targets and power to profitability.
The brand.
Plenty of firms would pay through the nose for T.M. Lewin’s brand legacy.
Thoman Mayes Lewin and Geoffrey James Lewin founded the firm way back in 1898 on London’s Panton Street, before the formal menswear brand moved to the iconic Jermyn Street in 1903.
Shortly after, the company designed and manufactured the world’s first button-front formal shirt - the ‘coat shirt.’ Today, you’ll find a formal shirt in most households around the world.
And by the First World War, T.M. Lewin had built a sturdy reputation for quality, enough for it to be selected as the supplier of uniforms to the RAF and British Army.
Fast-forward to more recent times and T.M. Lewin has manufactured more than 70 million shirts, opened hundreds of stores around the globe and become a household name.
But while there have been plenty of highs, like many companies with rich histories, it has also had its fair share of more challenging times.
Nevertheless, today, as an online-only brand, it has made huge strides in efficiency and profitability - with the help of HighCohesion.
The snag.
By early 2022, the pandemic had caught up with T.M. Lewin and the business went into administration. It was critical to bring the brand back to life as soon as possible but the T.M. Lewin team were adamant that the customer experience had to be right whilst setting up the business for success.
The team decided to accelerate a planned move to Shopify and they needed to clear a backlog of refunds that had built up during the administration process. The question was how.
Enter HighCohesion.
12 months
Time it took for T.M. Lewin to power back to profitability
70 million+
Number of shirts T.M. Lewin has sold around the world to date
1898
The first T.M. Lewin store opens on Panton Street, London
“We seriously value our partnership with HighCohesion.”
James Kearns - Managing Director, T.M. Lewin.
The HighCohesion solution.
T.M. Lewin’s rise from the ashes to become a thriving, profitable business in a little over a year shows what’s possible with collaboration between teams passionate about delivering results.
Both T.M. Lewin and HighCohesion were committed to getting this iconic brand back on track, and its turnaround is a customer experience story well worth telling.
We set about integrating T.M. Lewin’s existing tech stack with its new Shopify e-commerce platform to give it the solid data framework needed to succeed. Collaborating and delivering smart, fast and pragmatic solutions allowed the two teams to rapidly move to Shopify and enable the brand relaunch in just six weeks.
Building on those successes, HighCohesion worked with T.M. Lewin to derisk the business ahead of peak season and build additional efficiencies wherever possible.
To help enhance their existing operating model, process flows, and brand offering, we brought along our deep integration and Shopify expertise. For example, we didn’t just replace their automated refund process but reworked the entire post-purchase data flow to both Shopify and their new customer support platform, Gorgias. T.M. Lewin’s Support Agents had more information at hand and were able to deliver a better customer experience.
Bringing far more automation between its Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central ERP and Shopify, HighCohesion saved T.M. Lewin countless hours as its staff could spend less and less time on manual processes and more time on business growth.
This included integrating very complex product data (think about a shirt with different collar styles, sleeve lengths, fit types, colours, sizes 🥵) from the ERP into Shopify, aided by the Business Central app, TRIMIT.
Ultimately, it could now deliver a more personalised service to customers that would keep them returning.
Less lost revenue, less customer dissatisfaction and a team enabled to do what they did best: building back an iconic brand.
The feedback.
With its back end now integrated, T.M. Lewin could focus on powering towards profitability and providing its customers with the best formalwear anywhere.
It now has far better visibility of its data, is able to get a detailed insight into data flowing between its systems and can edit and resend data when issues do arise.
HighCohesion has also helped T.M. Lewin to improve its customer journey by being able to fetch data from multiple places and use it to improve.
Data from its warehouse, shipping partners and customer service tool is mixed effectively to give the T.M. Lewin team the most up-to-date information to create the best customer experiences.
HighCohesion has gained a depth of understanding of T.M. Lewin’s business processes and is now focused on continuous improvement of integrations and their entire Shopify ecosystem.
James Kearns, Managing Director at T.M. Lewin said:
“We seriously value our partnership with HighCohesion.
“Adept at simplifying complex processes, the HighCohesion team played a leading role in developing the processes at T.M. Lewin that enable us to keep serving our customers with excellence.”
And the best thing? With a solid foundation now in place, T.M. Lewin is planning new and exciting product ranges, setting up greater international reach and increasing buying and returning options for its loyal customer base.
This relationship is just getting started!
Tech stack integrated through HighCohesion
Ecommerce Platform
PIM (ERP extension)
ERP
Customer Service
3PL