Azura Fashion Group launched in 2019 in response to backlash over reports that luxury brands were destroying their surplus stock to protect their brand from deep discounting. Originally built as a platform for premium brands and their distributors to sell leftover stock into other markets without steep markdowns, Azura now sells through 55 marketplaces globally.
As Azura grew and gained media attention, it ran into an unexpected problem. “We were getting more fraud, especially with the products we carry,” said CEO Sam Wood. Azura sought a solution to stop fraud without frustrating its global base of luxury customers.
96%
average monthly order approval rate
Thousands
of dollars per month in prevented fraud
The Challenge: Correctly Differentiate Between International Luxury Clientele and Fraudsters
Azura started out using inexpensive or free fraud-prevention apps from its ecommerce platform’s marketplace, but their merchandise was a magnet for fraud, because luxury items are coveted and easy to resell. “Our average cart value ranges from $600 to $2,000, so fraud was quite a big deal when it did happen. We lost quite a lot to fraud in the beginning.”
When their ecommerce platform stopped processing their payments due to excessive chargebacks, Azura switched platforms, resolved to fight fraud better, and ran into another issue: customer experience.
“We were turning back orders from actual customers out of concern about fraud,” Wood said. “It doesn’t sit well with luxury buyers when you think they’re a scammer.” ClearSale’s research found that 40% of customers who spend $400 or more a month online will boycott a website that declines their order and complain about the retailer on social media.
The Solution: ClearSale Total Guaranteed Protection
Because even one chargeback can cost Azura thousands of dollars, they sought a solution to protect them from that financial risk — and from the reputational risk of rejecting good customers by mistake.
ClearSale Total Guaranteed Protection provides Azura with 100% coverage of any fraud-related chargeback costs. ClearSale also delivers the highest order approval rates and lowest false decline rates in the industry, which helps businesses like Azura earn more revenue and keep their good customers happy.
For Azura, ClearSale:
⦁ Screens every order using AI and machine learning to sort fraudsters from customers and prevent takeovers of trusted customers’ accounts.
⦁ Conducts a secondary review on every flagged transaction, quickly and accurately, using its international team of 1,500+ fraud specialists. This process lets Azura approve more good orders and avoid false declines.
⦁ Uses these advanced review results to train its algorithm, so ClearSale is always getting better at understanding how Azura’s customers behave compared to scammers.
⦁ Gives Azura an easy-to-use dashboard that shows order approval rates and fraud attempts.
⦁ Saves Azura money by eliminating fraud-related chargeback costs and preventing customer churn caused by false declines.
The Results: More Approved Orders, Happier Customers, Zero Chargebacks
Since partnering with ClearSale, Azura spends less time worrying about fraud and customer experience and more time serving its customers around the world. “ClearSale’s model works,” Wood said. “We saw improvement straight away, even in June 2022, when we did a lot of PR and fraudsters pounced.”
That month, even though fraud attempts represented more than ⅓ of the dollar value of all orders placed, ClearSale was able to safely approve nearly 90% of orders.
The ability to approve more good orders has helped Azura maintain a consistently high monthly approved-order value while experiencing no chargebacks.
Wood added that the biggest impact of working with ClearSale has been the reduction in stress and time spent on order review. “I don’t have to peek at every order and try to work out the little clues that might indicate fraud or look up the customer’s address to validate it. The ClearSale team has always been eager to help us and even to introduce us to new potential partners and merchants. It’s been easy to get answers from them.”
Now, Wood recommends that other ecommerce businesses look into fraud prevention solutions before they have a chargeback or customer experience issue. “It’s something I wish we’d done a lot earlier. With ClearSale, we have peace of mind that if it’s not flagged, we can ship it out. ClearSale has given us a lot more confidence in selling through all our channels.”
