Dubarry: Making strides with global ecommerce

A french courtesan is not an obvious namesake for country footwear. However, in a bid to differentiate themselves from the competition, Dubarry was named after Louis XV mistress, Madame du Barry. Since then, Dubarry has made an international name for itself in marine footwear and created the Galway boot. This iconic piece of footwear drew a crowd at a country fair in 2000 when Dubarry’s ‘man-in-a-bucket’ was unveiled to demonstrate its watertight design.

Today, Dubarry is an international brand with customers around the world. It sells via a combination of retail partners, pop-ups at country shows, and increasingly via its own ecommerce channels.

To learn more about Dubarry’s international ecommerce journey, we spoke to Head of ecommerce Marc O'Donnell.

International expansion comes with its challenges. Managing multiple language websites can become unwieldy and optimisation can be difficult. Local payment preferences also make things complicated. From iDEAL in the Netherlands, to Carte Bancarie in France, and SOFORT in Germany, the way people want to pay can vary as much as language. This is a primary reason Marc chose Adyen.

“Local payment methods are so important, especially where the brand is not so well known. They help to build trust and remove a potential barrier to purchase. And with Adyen, it’s been so easy. All the payment methods we’ve wanted have been available to us without having to integrate each one separately.”

In 2019, Dubarry made the decision to replatform its website to Shopware 5. It had outgrown its existing platform and Marc wanted to channel the time he spent fixing things towards growing the business. “It’s like the analogy of the guy with his head stuck under the car bonnet. You're never going to improve things unless you can lift your head up and see where you're going,” he said.

As well as consolidating several systems and simplifying things behind the scenes, the new platform would improve the customer experience with relevant recommendations, user-generated content, and product reviews.

It couldn’t have come at a better time. When COVID closed shop doors, Dubarry was ready for the online surge. Since then, the focus has doubled down on ecommerce and Marc is now responsible for driving a significant chunk of the businesses revenue. So it’s been a huge benefit to work with a payments provider that helps to keep things simple.

Dubarry uses Adyen’s payments plugin for Shopware which is built and managed in-house. It gives Dubarry access to key local payment methods, tools to optimise checkout conversions, and fraud prevention straight out of the box. Critically, it also lets Dubarry streamline its operations, as Marc explained:

“Previously, we were working with four different providers, which was not only more expensive, but more complicated. One of the key things we wanted to achieve with the re-platform was to standardise from one market to the next. Adyen allowed us to do that really nicely because there was unified reporting for the accounts teams and a single integration for the tech teams.”

The next step for Dubarry is to consolidate its online and in-store payments into one system. In that way it can provide flexibility to its customers and build a deeper understanding of their behaviour.

“We want to make the customer experience better by having a consolidated view of everything in one place. And I don’t see any reason why we’d need to look past Adyen for this.”

Switching platforms or rolling out new software solutions is always a process, which is why Marc values the service of his providers so highly.

“If you have bad support, you’re looking for a new provider. And Adyen’s was second-to-none. Every time I’ve had questions, I’ve never been left waiting for an answer.”

Ultimately, you need a partner willing to do what it takes to get the job done. For Marc, this means making selling easy: “Any time a customer wants to give me money, I want to be able to take it. Adyen operates with the same mindset: However the customer wants  to pay, we’ll support it. That is key.”