Flannels X Aura Vision

Post by
Daniel Martinho-Corbishley
Elevating Flannel’s in-store operations

About Flannels 🛍

Flannels is a British multi-brand retailer; it currently has 50 stores across the UK, all filled with carefully curated designer clothing and accessories.

The first Flannels store opened in the north of England in 1976 by Neil Prosser. In 2000, Flannels grew to 17 stores nationwide. 12 years later, Frasers Group bought a majority 51% stake in Flannels and in 2017 they acquired the brand in full. 

Flannels had been named ‘the biggest luxury retailer you’ve never heard of’ until recently. From runway collections to the latest streetwear drops, Flannels stores presents all of the hottest emerging designers and fashion's biggest names, including Balenciaga, Valentino, Saint Laurent, Off-White, Stone Island, Burberry and Balmain.

Requirements 📝

As part of its elevation strategy, Frasers group identified a need for increased visibility into its stores for more innovative and efficient ways to produce strategic decisions and processes at the store level.


The Retail Insights team wanted a simple overview of store performance to make decisions that positively affect overall business performance and to develop processes to ensure the business stays competitive in the modern retail climate - bridging the gap between the old and the new.


As Flannels department stores are located in high-profile, high-traffic locations and spread across multiple floors, the team also recognised the need to leverage their existing security cameras infrastructure rather than installing new sensors across their large retail footprint.


The team’s priorities were:
- Improving the customer experience
- Driving conversion rates
- Increasing productivity
- A more accurate view of Footfall and in-store operations

Solution 💡

Aura Vision  captures anonymous insights from customers and shop floor staff using existing security cameras to achieve cost-effective full-store coverage without needing to install new sensors.

Flannels saw a 0.75% increase in conversion using Aura Vision’s Precision Staff Planning tool. The team were able to improve staffing allocations across their multi-floor stores using precise customer demand information from across the week. This single use-case delivered 4X ROI on the solution, improved staffing productivity by 34% and reduced waiting times during peak trading hours.

The Flannels’ team also made use of several otherAura Vision products:

  • Enhanced Footfall - which provides a simple view of store performance, including passer-by traffic, footfall, conversion and customer demographics
  • Path to Purchase - to capture product engagement and demographic segmentation insights used to optimise departmental performance, and align retail stores with the overall direction of the business 
  • Basket Recovery - to evidence the impacts of the new staffing allocations during busy peak periods and to reduce basket abandonment rates by measuring queue times and checkout times.

Value 💸

At the end of the experimentation period - 6 months-, an uplift of 40% was seen in staff customer conversion across the treatment stores.

Flannels teams identified the largest opportunities across product offerings, customer experience and productivity and continue to do so across all their UK stores. 

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