ummit 2021.  Zalora, which is part of the Global Fashion Group, made the decision to personalise its target audience’s shopping experience and introduced a “personalisation squad” to offer a more structural approach to reach its target audience. “We have different people from different cultures focusing only on personalisation, offering their expertise,” Romeni said. The cultural element was very important, Romeni said, as Zalora serves several Southeast Asian countries where each market is unique. Zalora has a presence in Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, the Philippines, Hong Kong and Taiwan. The decision to personalise services at Zalora was a challenge, however, as each team was looking at it from a different standpoint.  “CRM would say, ‘I want the message personalised on the site’. Another team would say, ‘I want the banner to be personalised’. Pricing would say, ‘I want pricing to be personalised’. They’re all very relevant but they’re not going to be executed well. They’re all very small initiatives,” he said. Romeni said to enhance the customers’ personalised shopping experience, they had to create consistent experiences across all digital touchpoints which include search, content, browse and product recommendations on their online site, mobile and email. Zalora’s personalisation offering will help influence a shopper’s search and browse results based on his or her real-time behaviour, to make online shopping coherent and seamless. “Sometimes, a lot of companies want to predict, but you can just ask the customers, right?” he said. “So we ask the customer what they want with our technology. There is the search and we merged it with our suggestions and recommendations.” “If you have a wide variety of products, it’s hard to find what you are looking for, so communication is key. To better understand the shifts in consumer needs, Zalora leaned into data.   “Zalora’s ability to tap on data has given us an edge in understanding the changes during the period,” he said. Essential expansion Zalora also expanded into new categories amid changing consumer behaviour.  “We had to add something on the essentials category,” Romeni said. “Our expertise is in the lifestyle category so we were able to position ourselves as the lifestyle vertical, but not just in fashion now, also in the beauty, health, luxury and of course, lifestyle category.” The introduction of the essentials category helped the business during a very difficult time when customers weren’t thinking much about fashion, according to Romeni. “The company is always looking at ways to evolve and improve on our daily operations and services, our marketing, advertising and communication strategies to better connect with our consumers,” he said.