Patagonia Partners with RichRelevance to Personalize the Online Customer Experience

Outdoor gear and clothing company expands use of RichRelevance to Patagonia Japan based on proven success on Patagonia.com

San Francisco, CA – August 2, 2010 – RichRelevance®, the leading provider of dynamic e-commerce personalization for the world’s largest retailers, today announced that Patagonia has partnered with RichRelevance to deliver a more relevant experience to online shoppers. Patagonia, which focuses on making the best possible outdoor products and apparel with a bias towards simplicity and utility, selected RichRelevance and RichRecs™ to personalize the online shopper’s experience at Patagonia.com, employing innovations such as custom recommendation messaging to reflect the unique sensibility of the Patagonia audience. Based on its proven success with personalization in the US, Patagonia recently expanded its use of RichRelevance to Patagonia Japan‘s website.

Patagonia grew out of a small company that made tools for climbers and distinguished its brand through minimalism, simplicity and utility. “After surveying the market, we found that RichRelevance offered the most elegant—and powerful—product recommendation solution on the market. Their team and technology have expertly delivered a personalized online experience that lives up to our customers’ expectations while blending seamlessly with our site and trusted brand,” said Crist Costa, head of ecommerce technology at Patagonia.

With RichRelevance, Patagonia is able to offer a completely individualized experience to every site visitor based on the shopper’s unique attributes as well as numerous shopping behaviors such as past purchases, browsing history, and more. As a customer shops and explores on Patagonia’s US and Japan sites, personalized recommendations continually adapt and adjust to his or her activity and goals. This is accomplished through RichRelevance’s industry-leading enRICH Personalization Engine, which facilitates
competition among 60 independent recommendation strategies to deliver the most relevant experience. All recommendations include explicit messaging about why a product is suggested, framed in a way that resonates most with Patagonia shoppers (for example, “Folks who viewed this item also viewed” these other items).

“Patagonia is a true pioneer and a great partner. For both companies, our corporate cultures are the cornerstone of our business. We share a commitment to our customers, our products and our planet,” said Todd Pearson, Chief Customer Officer of RichRelevance. “Of course it has also been quite exciting to see the uptick in sales and engagement that results from delivering a relevant customer experience online, both in the US and on international sites like Patagonia Japan.”

About Patagonia

Patagonia, with sales last year of over $330M, is noted internationally for its commitment to product quality and environmental activism. Incorporating environmental responsibility in to product development, the company has, since 1996, used only organically grown cotton in its clothing line. With its most recent launch of synthetic fiber-to-fiber recycling, Patagonia is taking back worn-out polyester and nylon clothing and reincarnating it as new products, forever capturing the raw materials used in making virgin fiber. The company also advocates corporate transparency through its interactive website, The Footprint Chronicles, which outlines the environmental and social footprint of individual products. Patagonia was featured as The Coolest Company on the Planet on Fortune Magazine’s April 2007 cover.

About RichRelevance

RichRelevance is the leading provider of dynamic e-commerce personalization for the world’s largest retailers, including Wal-Mart, Overstock.com and Sears. Founded and led by the e-commerce expert who pioneered personalization R&D at Amazon.com, RichRelevance helps retailers increase revenues (over $1B in attributable sales since June 2008) by powering relevant experiences throughout the customer lifecycle and across multiple sales channels. The company stands apart for its dedicated team of personalization experts, integrated product suite, and award-winning personalization engine, which enables twice as many consumer touchpoints as the industry average. RichRelevance is located in San Francisco, with offices in Seattle and London. For more information, please visit www.richrelevance.com.