Yext for Retail Case Study
Cache Cache needed a scalable solution to manage information for its 825 stores in China across in-market digital services like Baidu.
Cache Cache needed a scalable solution to manage information for its 825 stores in China across in-market digital services like Baidu.
Increase in Traffic to Stores
More In-Store Transactions
Cache Cache is an international womenswear brand offering fashion apparel at an accessible price point.
A trademark of the Beaumanoir Group, Cache Cache opened its first shop in 1985. The retailer is now among the market leaders in French and international prêt-à-porter with thousands of sales outlets around the world, including more than 500 in France. Cache Cache is continuing to expand rapidly in Europe and Asia, with more than 825 stores in China alone.
The range of endpoints where consumers find brand information — search engines, apps, maps, voice assistants, and more — is constantly increasing, and those endpoints are very different in the Chinese market versus the European market. With Google, Facebook, and Instagram unavailable — and Google Maps no longer serving China — hundreds of millions of customers are searching for answers via digital services like Baidu Map, Tencent Map, AMap, and more. They're also discovering points of interest near them on platforms like Dianping.
But these services are often unfamiliar and difficult to understand for brands in the West, which presents a problem when it comes to rapid expansion in Asia.
This was the challenge for French retailer Cache Cache. Their locations in China surfaced in search with incomplete information on key services like Baidu Map, causing the brand to miss out on customers. Cache Cache sought a seamless way to list, manage, and verify the brand information for its 825 retail stores in China across these in-market platforms and services — with the goal of boosting discoverability and offline traffic.
"We knew we needed to be more visible online in order to ultimately draw traffic to our offline stores," explains Jerome Cambounet, Chief Executive Officer at Beaumanoir China. "But we were dealing with managing an important volume of information for new store openings, store closings, relocations — all on platforms and services we weren't as accustomed to working with. We needed to find a solution that would streamline the whole process."
With integrations with the largest global digital services used in China — offering 95%+ map coverage across mobile and desktop search engines — Yext gives businesses like Cache Cache the ability to easily update their brand information and deliver perfect answers across these key services that may be less familiar to them.
Prior to launching with Yext, Cache Cache store listings were incomplete on services like Baidu, and they did not exist at all on 360 Map. Now, the brand's information is correct and comprehensive across Tencent Map, Baidu Map, Sogou Map, 360 Map, and other services.
Additionally, Yext enabled Cache Cache to become brand-verified on Baidu, gaining access to Baidu's official backend to manage store locations in bulk — streamlining the process of updating brand information and delivering better answers to consumers searching on Baidu.
"This is very important for us," says Matthieu Broussin, Digital Transformation Manager at Beaumanoir China. "If your information is wrong, you risk your customers giving up on your brand — or even going to the wrong location, and they can't find anything. Then you lose that customer forever. We solved that with Yext."
After splitting its locations randomly into two groups — 124 stores versus 124 stores — Cache Cache launched half of the locations with Yext and received 7.7% more in-store traffic and 3.2% more transactions.
"Updating our brand information everywhere these customers are searching has made a huge difference," Broussin says. "The results have been amazing, and they have made it clear for us how linked online search is to offline traffic. This has been a major step forward."
Prior to launching on third-party platforms, Yext took steps to validate existing store information, acquire missing data, and structure location attributes in order to increase Cache Cache's internal store data integrity.
Cache Cache is now able to seamlessly manage and update all of its essential brand information across the key digital services in China — reaching consumers where they're performing the bulk of their high-intent searches. This boosts brand visibility, delivers a better customer experience, and drives increased offline traffic to Cache Cache stores in China.
To measure the value of working with Yext, Cache Cache leveraged data from store traffic counters to conduct an A/B test comparing footfall at stores with their information updated and launched with Yext against stores with existing information not yet launched in the platform. The results? Impactful.
