About the Client: Only The Brave (OTB) Group

Only The Brave (OTB) Group is a major force in the global luxury fashion industry. Founded in 2002 by Renzo Rosso, the Breganze-based holding company reported a turnover of €1.9 billion in 2023*, with 40% generated in the APAC region.

Operating in over 100 markets globally, OTB Group’s portfolio includes Diesel, Marni, Maison Margiela, Jil Sander, and AMIRI — each a leader in its respective segment. Collectively, the group manages more than 600 mono-brand stores and employs 7,000 people.

In 2022, the brand unveiled its “largest-ever retail project in Shanghai” with the opening of the new JC Plaza luxury mall, bringing together Maison Margiela, Marni, Jil Sander, and Amiri stores under one roof.

The group’s momentum accelerated in 2023, with a 74%* year-on-year increase in turnover across Asia. Most notably, Maison Margiela stood out with a 72.4%* surge in sales in China and Korea, driven by strong customer demand for its avant-garde collections.

With a footprint spanning across key and emerging markets, and ambitious expansion plans, the brand has firmly established itself among the world’s most dynamic luxury groups.

To nurture its digital presence in China’s retail sector and deepen its impact in the region, OTB Group partnered with IT Consultis (ITC) as a trusted digital transformation partner.

*Source: OTB Group 2023 Results Report 

Goals & Objectives

To achieve this goal, the transformation aimed to unify retail operations across China by deploying WeCom clienteling to:

• Enhance Customer Engagement: Deliver personalized, real-time communication and seamless omnichannel experiences.
• Optimize Data Management: Enable smarter segmentation and targeting through CRM enrichment.
• Boost Sales Productivity: Empower stores and their Sales Associates with secure, automated remote-selling capabilities.

Solutions

Diesel: Laying the Groundwork for Group-Wide WeCom Clienteling Rollout

The project kicked off with Diesel as the pilot brand, leading the adoption of WeCom in four selected stores in China.

To align global and local stakeholders, ITC led an educational workshop to build a shared understanding of China’s digital retail landscape and introduce WeCom as a dedicated clienteling solution — a necessary tool to elevate customer engagement in the local market.

The approach emphasized unifying offline and online touchpoints, empowering Sales Associates to onboard clients onto WeCom and deliver personalized communications and brand experiences.

Key initiatives included:

• Customer Recruitment Activation: Enabled WeCom deep link sharing to onboard existing and new clients (including reactivating “sleeping” ones) onto Sales Associates’ WeCom — via QR codes, integration with the brand’s WeChat Official Account, SMS, and digital ads.
• Content Hub for O2O: Developed centralized asset libraries to align Retail and Marketing communications across touchpoints.
• Remote Selling Tools: Implemented WeCom Pay and Product Catalog with standardized Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), ensuring operational efficiency and brand control (more information on this in the next section).

Marni: Elevating Loyalty and Conversion through Precision Clienteling

Building on Diesel’s success, we expanded the WeCom strategy to Marni. The focus was on strengthening CRM profiles, reactivating RedNote (Xiaohongshu) fans, and unifying online and offline journeys.

Moreover, a critical gap was identified in remote selling: Sales Associates relied on personal WeChat and bank accounts to process direct online orders — creating operational risk and a lack of visibility. We addressed this by implementing WeCom Pay and centralizing remote sales within official brand systems.

Key initiatives for Marni’s WeCom deployment included:

• CRM Enrichment: Implemented direct WeCom tagging for Sales Associates to enhance customer profiles and identify and reactivate RedNote (Xiaohongshu) fans.
• Staff Training & Governance: Rolled out SOPs and training workshops for unified clienteling across Retail and Marketing teams.
• Secure Payments: Replaced manual WeChat Pay transactions/bank transfers with traceable, brand-owned WeCom Pay and Product Catalog features.

Maison Margiela: Scaling Brand Visibility with WeCom Moments

The next phase of the project was the deployment of WeCom across all Maison Margiela stores in China.

One key milestone was the development of a group-level WeCom Moments strategy. This content governance system enabled Sales Associates to share WeCom Moments aligned with each company’s branding and directly reach clients through their Moments feed — a space checked frequently by WeChat users everyday.

Within one month, Maison Margiela’s Sales Associates:

• Published 15 WeCom Moments
• Achieved tens of thousands of impressions
• Drove 40 times higher brand visibility (outperforming WeChat Official Account articles or SMS messages)

Jil Sander & AMIRI: Centralizing Clienteling Workflows

The final phase of the project focused on rolling out WeCom across 14 stores between Jil Sander and AMIRI.

This phase built on the strong foundations established with Diesel, Marni, and Maison Margiela, aimed to address persistent operational challenges: streamlining clienteling practices, centralizing customer data, and reducing reliance on personal WeChat accounts among Sales Associates.

To regain control and establish consistency, we deployed a structured clienteling framework tailored to both brands. Solutions included:

• Secure Data Ownership: Migrated client data from personal WeChat to brand-controlled WeCom.
• Unified Clienteling Journey Mapping: Designed end-to-end, online-offline user flows, from recruitment and onboarding to follow-up and post-sale engagement for retention.
• Performance Measurement: Introduced standardized KPIs to track Sales Associates engagement and campaign effectiveness.

As a result, this structured and secure WeCom setup onboarded hundreds of leads and customers within one month. Response rates improved by 60%, and SOPs ensured long-term process reliability.

Results

The WeCom rollout delivered measurable business impact across all OTB Group brands in China, enhancing clienteling capabilities while driving commercial results at scale:

• More than 100 Stores Enabled: WeCom was fully integrated across all five OTB brands.
• Significant Sales Uplift: Each store generated hundreds of thousands of RMB per month through in-store and remote selling.
• Expanded Customer Base: Thousands of new contacts were onboarded and hundreds of leads were qualified in the first month.
• High Engagement Rates: Response rates reached between 60% and 85%, while the Moments strategy delivered 40 times more visibility.
• 100% Data Ownership & Governance: SOPs and centralized systems restored full brand control and transparency.

Through a phased, brand-sensitive rollout, IT Consultis empowered OTB Group to secure the future of its retail engagement in China.

Our integrated strategy, cross-functional workshops, and scalable execution model laid the groundwork for long-term omnichannel growth for the luxury group in one of the world’s most complex markets.