20 - 10 - 2026

Asian Footwear Turns to Salesforce to Build an AI-Driven, Data-Led Retail Business

For footwear retailers operating across stores, e-commerce platforms and third-party marketplaces, growth increasingly depends on understanding customers beyond individual transactions. Asian Footwear is seeking to address that challenge by connecting customer data across its expanding retail network, using Salesforce technology to build a unified view of shoppers and lay the groundwork for more personalised, AI-driven engagement.

The company’s collaboration with Salesforce comes as Asian Footwear looks to coordinate customer interactions across more than 100 exclusive brand outlets and a network of over 30,000 retail partners. Its operations span manufacturing, distribution, physical retail, e-commerce and marketplaces, creating a complex flow of customer information across multiple channels.

Salesforce said the collaboration is intended to consolidate millions of customer records across marketing, commerce and service into a single source of truth. The objective is to give teams a real-time, 360-degree view of customers and make engagement more relevant across the buying journey.

The move reflects a broader shift in retail technology: businesses are looking beyond simply establishing a presence across channels towards connecting the information generated by those channels. For Asian Footwear, the immediate focus is customer engagement, while the longer-term ambition extends to AI-assisted decision-making and automation across the organisation.

Connecting the fragmented customer journey

A customer might discover a product on a marketplace, browse the brand’s website, visit a physical outlet and later contact customer service. When these interactions sit in separate systems, retailers can struggle to build a complete picture of customer preferences and purchase behaviour.

Asian Footwear is using Salesforce Data 360 to bring together customer information from its exclusive outlets, website, marketplaces and offline sales. The aim is to create unified customer profiles so that marketing and service teams can understand interactions in context rather than treating each touchpoint as an isolated event.

This data foundation is already being used to support more targeted engagement. Through Marketing Cloud, Asian Footwear is seeking to re-engage previous shoppers and recover abandoned shopping carts, moving away from broad messaging towards more timely, personalised outreach.

The commercial rationale is straightforward: relevant communication can help retailers reconnect with customers who have already shown interest in their products. However, the scale of the benefit will depend on how effectively the company uses the consolidated data and whether personalised campaigns translate into stronger conversion, repeat purchases and customer retention.

The company has not disclosed quantified results from the implementation, including changes in conversion rates, abandoned-cart recovery, repeat purchases or marketing returns. Its current announcement therefore establishes the direction of the transformation rather than demonstrating its financial impact.

From customer data to service automation

Asian Footwear is also consolidating customer service interactions through Salesforce Service Cloud, bringing together conversations across chat, email, social media and telephony.

A unified service view can help employees access previous interactions when responding to a query, reducing the need for customers to repeat information across channels. Salesforce said a bot powered by its technology on the company’s website already handles a significant share of customer queries, allowing service teams to concentrate on more complex requests.

The company has not specified the proportion of queries resolved by the bot or disclosed measured changes in response times. Those indicators will be important in assessing whether automation is improving service efficiency while maintaining the quality of customer support.

The broader challenge for retailers is to balance automation with human intervention. Routine requests may be suitable for automated handling, but complex product, delivery or service issues can require contextual judgement and direct assistance. A connected customer record can help support that transition by giving employees better information when an interaction needs to be escalated.

Beyond customer-facing operations, Asian Footwear is using Slack to connect its technology, design and operations teams, with plans to extend its use across the organisation. It is also exploring Agentforce, Salesforce’s AI-agent platform, and Rich Communications Services (RCS) for potential applications in customer and employee workflows.

These initiatives remain at different stages. The company has described its use of Slack and its existing Salesforce applications, while Agentforce and RCS are areas it is exploring rather than fully deployed capabilities.

Building towards an agentic enterprise

The longer-term ambition is to make data and AI part of how the business operates, rather than limiting their use to marketing or customer service.

Ashish Prakash, chief technology officer of Asian Footwear, said technology was central to how the company intended to build and scale its business. With operations spanning manufacturing, distribution, retail and digital commerce, he said the priority was to connect data and turn it into intelligence that teams could act on in real time.

“Our collaboration with Salesforce is an important part of that journey,” Prakash said, adding that the company was also developing its own AI and data capabilities. Its long-term vision, he said, was to create an increasingly agentic organisation in which AI could help teams make better decisions, automate repetitive work and serve customers more effectively.

The term “agentic enterprise” refers to an operating model in which AI agents can assist with tasks and workflows, drawing on connected data and applications while working alongside people. For a retailer, potential applications could extend from customer engagement to operational planning, although Asian Footwear has not disclosed specific Agentforce deployments or detailed implementation timelines.

Aditi Sharma, vice-president for the consumer and manufacturing industry segment at Salesforce India, said the next phase of retail competition would depend on a company’s ability to use customer context effectively across channels.

“The next era of retail will not be won by reach alone, but by relevance at scale,” Sharma said. She described the collaboration as a move towards an operating model in which data, AI and employees work together to anticipate customer needs and reduce friction across the customer journey.

Her comments reflect Salesforce’s position as a technology provider, while the practical outcomes for Asian Footwear will depend on adoption, data quality and the integration of these systems into everyday business processes.

Asian Footwear’s technology strategy extends beyond customer-facing systems. The company said it is investing in data, AI and digital platforms across products, inventory, manufacturing, distribution, retail and digital commerce.

Connecting these functions could help the company build a more consistent view of demand and operations. Its stated areas of interest include product intelligence, demand forecasting, customer engagement and operational decision-making. The company has not provided detailed performance metrics or described the specific AI systems being used in each area.

The distinction is important because a unified customer platform is only one component of a broader digital transformation. Turning data into business value requires reliable information, systems that can exchange it and teams capable of using the resulting insights. Expanding automation also requires clarity over which decisions can be delegated to software and which require human oversight.

With its nationwide retail network and presence across online marketplaces, Asian Footwear has a broad base of customer interactions from which to develop these capabilities. Its brand ambassador, former Indian cricket captain MS Dhoni, also reflects the company’s ambition to build a recognisable consumer brand, although brand visibility and digital capability are distinct elements of its growth strategy.

The next test will be whether Asian Footwear can translate connected data into measurable improvements in customer retention, service efficiency and operational decisions.

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