De Rode Winkel and Broekman: feeling at home in both store and webshop

At De Rode Winkel, a special corner has currently been set up for Miffy. In Utrecht, there was only one other place left to sell Miffy items. Because De Rode Winkel is not a tourist shop, they were added to the portfolio. As a result, a beautiful display has been created for the Denim Miffy, adding yet another experience to De Rode Winkel. Daan continues his story: “We also think it’s super important that when a woman comes into the store who gave birth six months ago, she can shop here comfortably. In that case, it can be a little daunting and challenging to buy a pair of jeans again. That’s why we have a changing table, and we might give them a Miffy plush toy as a gift when they’ve made a purchase. People don’t forget that, because the child immediately grabs the plush, and every time they see it, they remember De Rode Winkel.”

That feeling we create in the store is something we also want to translate online. All product descriptions are written in-house by our marketing team, and we explain exactly how everything works. If an item happens to be out of stock, we simply call the customer to let them know and offer an alternative if possible. We notice that people appreciate this. When someone orders something from us online, we always include a personal card, which gets great reactions.”

Approximately 20% of our online customers also shop in our physical store. That’s about 2% of all customers who visit us at De Rode Winkel. For Broekman, that figure is 1%. Most customers are from Utrecht, but more and more orders are also coming from abroad." According to Daan, the reason why customers from abroad order from De Rode Winkel is because webshops there are still somewhat less advanced online. Although they don’t necessarily aim to sell a lot abroad, they do want to offer a certain level of service. For example, they have translated some pages into multiple languages and added PayPal. This way, customers abroad are not dependent on credit card payments and can simply pay with their own bank.

Recently, our POS transactions have also been processed via Buckaroo. “For our financial administration, it is important to have faster insight into which transactions have been made,” says Daan. Through Buckaroo, all customers get access to a Plaza account, which allows them to view transactions and create reports. “Plaza is an easy and accessible system. Everyone in our team knows how it works and where to find things. In the past, we sometimes had a customer who accidentally paid twice. It used to take a lot of time and effort to locate that transaction. Now I can simply look it up myself and reverse it. In addition, we now have more control. We can easily apply a four-eyes principle for returns. I like being able to see how many purchases are returned in a day, so we can keep an eye on it,” Daan continues.

We look ahead to a future where paying at a traditional checkout counter will not always be necessary. Daan also sees opportunities in this. A self-checkout option could be interesting for customers who want to pay quickly. At the same time, the in-store experience will, of course, remain a top priority. There must still be a place where a product can be beautifully wrapped and where customers receive the famous Rode Winkel bag — a staple in the streetscape of Utrecht, just like the store itself.