American shoe brand Stride Ride expands in Alibaba’s Tmall

It has developed a specialist toolkit to help parents measure their kids’ feet.

American children’s footwear brand Stride Rite has expanded in China’s digital marketplace place by launching in Alibaba Group’s B2C online market Tmall, according to a press release.

It launched its flagship store on the e-commerce platform in November. Stride Rite first entered China nearly a decade ago through department stores and local shops, but decided to pivot its business in the country entirely online.

Over the past six months, the brand participated in China’s biggest shopping extravaganza, Alibaba’s 11.11, and is working with a third-party Tmall partner to bring its full line of products to Chinese consumers in interactive ways.

At the same time, Stride Rite is tapping into Tmall’s digital tools and technologies to educate and engage with new customers in China who may not be familiar with the brand’s legacy.

To improve consumers’ online shopping experience, it put together a toolkit to help parents quickly measure their kids’ feet so they can easily find the right pair of shoes. This helped bring down their product-returns rate to under 10%.

Stride Rite has also leveraged real-time consumer feedback to inform its product selection and brand positioning in China. For example, the brand took into consideration the need to increase stock for wider sizes.

It also retrenched its machine-washable products after learning that Chinese consumers preferred to hand wash their shoes to avoid having them mix with other laundry.