Wiggle-CRC ID2 Driving Innovation
The client
Wiggle-CRC was started at the back of a local bike shop in 1999 by Mitch Dall and Harvey Jones with an investment of just £2,000. The two entrepreneurs decided the internet provided an enormous opportunity to grow their business, and so transformed the company to become the UK’s leading online sports retailer.
Today Wiggle-CRC has over 350 employees, operates in 80 countries, and is continuing to expand. The company has its own well-respected brand dhb, supports a huge network of worldwide events, and is the title sponsor of UCI ladies professional cycling team, Wiggle Honda.
The challenge
Rapid developments in innovation and technology mean that change cycles continue to gather speed, and it is increasingly the customer that drives those changes. To match the speed of change in the market, and to increase the loyalty of their customer base, Wiggle-CRC needed to up the pace of their overall development delivery process.
Besides rapid results, Wiggle-CRC wanted a strong innovation process that they could learn from. Searchlight’s ID2 service offered both, sparking new ideas in a fun and relaxed way, and delivering concrete, credible outcomes in a matter of weeks.
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Many of Wiggle-CRC’s employees are avid sports enthusiasts, making them the perfect experts to create and shape the ideas needed to improve the customer experience and build stronger, loyal relationships.
ID2 took them beyond the basic transactional process, to create a focus on the customer. It helped develop ideas for new ways to improve the customer experience and create technologies that would inspire and deliver the ‘joy of sport’.
Customer personas helped kick-start the creative process. Brainstorming sessions then enabled Wiggles experts to find new ways to add value to their customers’ active lives. And, unusual combinations of visual images, helped Wiggle-CRC’s team develop innovative futuristic thinking.
The results were clear. Rapid progress was made – within two weeks, initial paper and digital prototypes for four mobile applications. By the end of three weeks, customer feedback had been obtained and used to improve the initial ideas and develop working models.
By the end of a concentrated four-week process, Wiggle-CRC had the MVP specification for the apps, as well as a clear roadmap for the future.
“We would never have believed we could deliver so much in such a short time. Searchlight’s ID2 has accelerated our thinking, giving us the ability to deliver innovative engagement solutions for our customers, and we’ve even had fun along the way,” says the CIO of Wiggle-CRC.
Wiggle-CRC know they must adapt as they learn from their customers – the process will be iterative, and data must underpin their decisions. A series of simple KPIs have been agreed against which they will measure success.
The process itself has been very innovative, and we’ve now got the tools to keep the momentum going. Searchlight allowed us to go back to our roots and be highly entrepreneurial. We can’t wait to share the final product with our customers.
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