In the early days of e-commerce, some legacy retailers were hesitant to launch e-commerce stores, fearing that online sales would “cannibalize” sales from their brick-and-mortar locations.
Even just eight years ago, in January 2017, after Target announced that for the then-just-passed holiday season store sales were down 3% YoY while online sales were up 30%, Jim Cramer said on CNBC’s TheStreet that for Target, it was “a total cannibalization of itself.”
These days, retail rhetoric is less likely to pit in-store against e-commerce, favoring instead the buzzword “omnichannel” (which appeared 13 times in the recent NRF Big Show program). Since many shoppers choose to shop online one day and in-store the next, omnichannel’s adherents urge retailers to make either choice seamless.
Here’s one way Endear, a customer relationship management (CRM) firm, is flying the omnichannel flag: Encouraging retailers to direct in-store associates to reach out to e-commerce customers, and to pay those associates commission for resulting online sales.
“If you let your salespeople email and text with customers and make recommendations for what they should buy online, you’re going to increase your sales online,” Leigh Sevin, co-founder of Endear, told Retail Brew.
Endear’s website puts it more pointedly: “The in-store-only commission structure should be a relic of the past.”
Omnichannel surfing: Sevin enumerated several ways that retailers on the platform can encourage in-store associates to spur online sales, including emailing or texting online-only customers far from brick-and-mortar locations to highlight new arrivals they might like based on their order history, and following up with shoppers who’ve purchased either online or in-store to recommend other items they’re apt to like.
Sevin estimated that 15% of Endear’s retail partners are paying in-store workers for online sales they facilitate, and that she expects that portion to grow. Endear’s proprietary software enables the platform to attribute sales to specific associates irrespective of whether the customers they helped purchase online or in-stores.
Endear also allows customizing what Sevin called the “window of attribution,” meaning retailers can set the time limit (or have no limit at all) for how many days or weeks after sales associates help customers that those customers’ purchases earn them a commission.
Takin’ it to the sheets: Boll & Branch, the upscale DTC bedding brand, has eight brick-and-mortar stores, with plans to double that number in 2025, according to Anna Esrov, its VP of customer experience and loyalty.
Retail news that keeps industry pros in the know
Retail Brew delivers the latest retail industry news and insights surrounding marketing, DTC, and e-commerce to keep leaders and decision-makers up to date.
Rather than stock every fabric, color, and size, the stores have a “curated inventory,” Ezrov said. So if a store associate all but sells a customer on a Summit Supima sheet set, which retails for $729 for the queen size, but it turns out that the color the customer wants, Bluestone, is not in stock, that could spell a lost commission for the associate if the customer went home and ordered it online. Worse, if the customer got online at home and ended up ordering from a competing brand, it could spell a lost sale for Boll & Branch.
But the retailer uses Endear to safeguard against those scenarios. If some or all of what in-store customers seek is not in stock, store employees order it online to be home-delivered, essentially an e-commerce transaction, and yet they still earn a commission.
Far from an isolated scenario, on average about half of the order value of in-store purchases end up being shipped to customers, Esrov said.
Bed, math, and beyond: This year, Boll & Branch has cooked up another omnichannel strategy, said Esrov, who tends to shorten the term to “omni.”
“In 2025, one of the big focuses for incentivizing the store managers is incentivizing their sales based on total omni sales of a 20-mile radius of the store,” Esrov said.
While the brand is still ironing out the exact commission structure, the store managers’ sales goals will combine in-store sales and regional online sales, and if they hit the goals commission, bonuses will be shared among store employees.
“Andy, you may decide to go into our store in Greenwich, Connecticut, and purchase $3,000 worth of bedding,” Esrov explained, apparently mistaking me for someone in a higher tax bracket. If I lived within 20 miles of the store “and two weeks later, you go online and complete a purchase of $7,000, that would still fall within the radius, helping to attribute to this omni sales goal.”
Far from cannibalizing in-store sales, or making store associates ambivalent about online sales for which they earn no commission, employees will be rewarded for helping sell consumers on the brand irrespective of where those consumers ultimately complete their purchase.
“We’re still working out the kinks, but I think this is going to be a big unlock,” Esrov said. “We are just truly focused on giving the customer the best experience and meeting them where they are.”