Keeping up with fast fashion is never easy. But at Forever 21, organizing 200 new items a day and conducting online and in-store sales in more than 50 countries bring some unique challenges. To modernize its infrastructure and deal more easily with peaks in demand, the retailer turned to Microsoft Azure. Before long, Forever 21 was using new levels of scalability to break revenue records over the 2018 holiday season.
“Ultimately, by scaling our presence in Azure, we got through our biggest holiday season ever without a hitch.”
Kevin Diamond, Head of Global E-Commerce, Forever 21
Affordable trends
Founded in 1984 in Highland Park, Los Angeles, Forever 21 is an affordable fashion retailer dedicated to providing the latest apparel for women, men, and children to the world’s shoppers. The company operates in more than 50 countries, with 550 stores in the United States alone, and has a global online presence.
Keeping up with the latest trends is never easy, and with more than 150,000 styles available on its website—and 200 more added each day—the company has its work cut out managing inventory and meeting the peaks in demand typical of a fast-moving industry like fashion retailing. So, to ensure that it can always provide customers the latest products in the most convenient way, Forever 21 uses Microsoft Azure to help manage its in-store and online sales.
“As an iconic brand in the competitive fast fashion market, Forever 21 has to stay ahead of the latest trends in fashion, business, and technology,” says Alex Ok, President at Forever 21. “We believe that one of the best ways to reach our loyal customers is in the cloud, where we can always deliver an unforgettable Forever 21 experience.”
The ebbs and flows of fashion
All fashion retailers experience peaks and troughs in demand, but those peaks are more regular and pronounced for Forever 21. “We’re constantly bringing new products in as trends emerge,” says Kevin Diamond, Head of Global E-Commerce at Forever 21. “Where a typical retailer might have four or five seasons, every week is like a new season for us.”
With a constant cycle of trends and promotional activity, Forever 21 websites are always busy. And during major seasonal retail events like the US Thanksgiving holiday, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday, Forever 21 web traffic can easily spike to 15 times above average.
To cope, Forever 21 requires scalability. An outdated on-premises environment based on previous versions of Microsoft SQL Server and Windows Server 2008, however, restricted its ability to handle periods of peak demand.
“During previous holidays, we had site scalability issues that made it difficult for us to meet the levels of customer service that we expect from ourselves,” says Diamond. “We wanted to ensure that the 2018 holiday season was different.”
A trip to the cloud
With Thanksgiving and Black Friday literally weeks away in 2018, and both these solutions reaching an end of their support life, Forever 21 recognized an opportunity to modernize its infrastructure in the cloud and provide the levels of scalability, agility, and security it would need to make the most of the holiday season. And because Forever 21 takes the security of its customers’ information seriously, it wanted a cloud environment with stringent security and privacy processes.
“We wanted to upgrade our security posture with advanced cloud technologies,” says Diamond. “We knew that we could use Azure to do it.”
The company moved from a completely on-premises operations and database infrastructure to Windows Server 2016 and SQL Server 2016, all running on Azure Virtual Machines, to deliver the flexibility to scale resources at will. To ensure the migration went smoothly, Forever 21 first engaged the Microsoft Technology Center to identify potential problems and form a holistic migration plan that helped to get the new infrastructure up and running in time for the busy holiday period.
The retailer also worked with the Microsoft Cloud Economics team and partnered with Attunix—now known as Redapt—to assess its estate and correctly size and price the new Azure environment. The team introduced Forever 21 to the Azure Hybrid Benefit, which the company uses to lower its total cost of ownership by using its existing on-premises Windows Server and SQL Server licenses in Azure. Forever 21 now makes a 20 percent annual saving on software licences and server and network infrastructure—amounting to $250,000.
The retailer uses Azure management services such as Azure Monitor and the Application Insights feature to provide a consistent view of what’s happening across the company’s entire cloud environment. Finally, Forever 21 worked with the Microsoft account team, who helped to align resources and execute the infrastructure modernization quickly and reliably via Microsoft FastTrack.
Record-breaking revenues
After the solution was deployed, the company’s newfound agility instantly resulted in measurable benefits. When seasonal demand spikes struck, the company scaled up to as many as 120,000 concurrent sessions to meet demand. The result was unprecedented revenue. And after the holiday, Forever 21 scaled down from 64 web servers to just 16 servers, lowering costs and generating savings that it passes on to customers.
“We had record Thanksgiving and Black Friday sales,” says Diamond. “With Azure, we were able to cope with more sessions and more online customers than we’d ever seen—by almost 50 percent. Ultimately, by scaling our presence in Azure, we got through our biggest holiday season ever without a hitch.”
Find out more about Forever 21 on Twitter and LinkedIn.
“As an iconic brand in the competitive fast fashion market, Forever 21 has to stay ahead of the latest trends in fashion, business, and technology. We believe that one of the best ways to reach our loyal customers is in the cloud, where we can always deliver an unforgettable Forever 21 experience.”
Alex Ok, President, Forever 21
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