We love hearing how our customers are using our products to grow and scale their businesses. Now, you’ll get to hear it all directly from ACAI Outdoorwear Co-Founder, Kasia Bromley. Here’s how the brand turned their customer feedback into actionable insights for product improvement.
ACAI Outdoorwear is a sustainable brand created by women for women with a mission to transform the outdoor experience. Home of the Skinny Outdoor Trousers, ACAI is also a brand that understands the value that customer feedback can bring. Here’s a closer look at our brand goals and why we value our customer reviews.
By women for women
What I love most about the outdoors are the benefits it brings to my physical and mental wellbeing. Because of this, I know the importance of wearing clothes that look and feel great, and that are built for a purpose.
When I started my career as a couture designer, I didn’t want to create the kind of fashion that would end up on display in a museum. My passion was always to design clothes that would provide the same quality and style as couture fashion, while also serving a purpose and supporting outdoor lifestyles.
At ACAI, our all-female design team is focused on creating outerwear that fits women’s specific needs. Therefore, as we design our products, we take into account the fact that women of different shapes and sizes come to our brand looking for the right fit, comfort, and quality. Because of this, our design team is thinking about everything from chafing to the type of undergarments that might be worn with our products. We do all of this to ensure that our customers are feeling good and looking great with products that will keep them dry and warm, while also keeping the wind away.
Ideally, this is when customers will start to reap the mental health and physical benefits of being outdoors. Going outdoors can make us feel better — inside and out — and the right clothing can make all the difference.
The importance of customer reviews
As an advocacy-based eCommerce brand, we have grown because of our incredible community. We receive a lot of feedback from customers in every form, but the most impactful way is through our reviews, which we collect with Yotpo.
This feedback is really valuable for our product team as it allows us to quickly understand if there is any kind of issue with our products. Yotpo Reviews have allowed us to take note of issues about sizing, potential improvements we can make to new products, and our size and color offerings for specific products.
How customer feedback led to the creation of our bestselling product
In 2021, we introduced our Trek Shorts, which took a fabric and cut that we know and love — and that we know our customers love — and created what we hoped to be the perfect walking shorts. While these shorts sold well, we started seeing a pattern of customer feedback saying, “I love these, but can you offer them in a longer length?”
We acted on that feedback quickly after the launch to start developing longer shorts. Our product team went through a minimum of three rounds of fittings and sampling processes. As a best practice, we do fittings for all of our new products — even when we’re already familiar with the fabric — to ensure that the fit meets the purpose of the product. Over the course of several months, we developed the perfect length for outdoor shorts.
Our Mid-Length Trek Shorts were born in the spring of 2022. We’re now offering the Original Trek Shorts and the Mid-Length Trek Shorts, which were our bestselling products all through the summer of 2022. This is simply another example of how impactful the customer feedback loop can be, and we’re thrilled that it’s working well for us.
We’re always listening, always improving
The process of creating the Mid-Length Trek Shorts is proof that your customers hold so much insight.
We’ve received over 10,000 reviews across all of our products. This is feedback that was not incentivised, but rather, it was shared by our customers who took the time to write and share their thoughts because they believe in our products and our mission.
Listening to our customers’ feedback has led us to developing one of the most comprehensive sizing charts for outdoorwear. We offer four different leg lengths with UK sizes ranging from 6 to 22, and we’d love to increase that even further in the future.
While we love to see five star reviews come in, focusing on those one and two star ratings is equally important. Taking the time to read the review and understand the feedback will allow your brand to make the kind of product improvements that could really make a difference. Most customers simply want to see the product improve. Dedicating that time to respond and act on the negative reviews instead of chasing the positive reviews can really help your business grow.
