Ann Summers is a British-born, multinational retailer, specialising in lingerie and adult toys. Since its first shop opened in 1970, the brand has revolutionised and led the industry, growing to 85+ stores across the UK and Ireland in the process.
With over 1,000 frontline retail employees in the UK alone, Ann Summers needed to give them on-demand access to learning opportunities and key communications. Employees also needed the ability to connect and collaborate with their peers from day one, through onboarding and beyond.
Revenue
Sales increased by 10% for stores using Thrive in a A/B learning test.
Strike rate
Learners using Thrive exceeded business target strike rate of 20%.
With so many employees that aren’t desk-based, a solution that works as effectively on mobile as it does on a laptop was a key priority for the Ann Summers team.
Add to this bite-sized, visual content that their employees can engage with at their own speed, and they found the perfect fit for their learning culture in Thrive.
More collaboration. More opportunities to learn
With Thrive every new employee receives a personalised, frictionless onboarding experience, giving them access to the learning content they need to perform and progress their careers from day dot.
Whether they’re in head office or on the shop floor, Ann Summers’ teams can connect, collaborate and learn from each other round the clock in an organic, social, user-driven way.
“Innovative. Revolutionary. Fresh.”
Ann Summers’ Learning & Development Partner Becky West said:
“We are thrilled to be entering this partnership with Thrive, which will allow us to unite everyone with our learning strategy and streamline communication. We needed a mobile solution for our frontline staff, and we chose to work with Thrive because they are the most innovative solution out there for learning needs that correlate with our brand.”
“Feedback from our initial super users has been fantastic. Straight away, they knew how to use it because THRIVE is super intuitive and easy to use.”
A culture of experimentation
The L&D team at Ann Summers was recently able to demonstrate Thrive’s impact to their stakeholders by creating a culture of experimentation, and harnessing their data to tell a story.
Identifying a need to increase sales for their Buzz Fresh and hosiery lines, they partnered with Thrive to run a series of experiments across their retail stores. The aim? To see how their L&D strategy - and Thrive - impacted sales of these two lines. Stores using Thrive outperformed those who weren't - and the overall strike rates (the way stores track how often customers make a purchase) increased from 14.8% to 23% across all regions. This led to an overall 10% increase in their sales for that year.
This approach showcased the transformative impact of their blended learning programme, and proved to their stakeholders that L&D is an essential element of retail success.
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Becky West
Learning & Development Partner at Ann Summers
“I would definitely recommend Thrive to other organisations. All your learning is in one place and it’s incredibly social. It’s a place where your teams will want to go to learn.”
Case Studies
Thrive empowers 3M+ learners in world-class companies
350+ modern companies like Volvo, British Airways, Sky, Krispy Kreme, Financial Times, Frasers Group, Vodafone and Travis Perkins, trust Thrive to power their people’s development.
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MyTutor finds the perfect solution to their learning, collaboration and internal comms challenges.