Bestseller opened 358 new stores and retail sales grew by 10% in 2025. When a fashion group scales that fast, every brand underneath it has to keep it up.
Selected, Bestseller’s contemporary Scandinavian fashion brand, operates 26 stores across Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium. Since 1997, the brand has built its identity around quality, simplicity, and a design philosophy grounded in Nordic craftsmanship. That identity only works if every store consistently represents it, no matter the season, campaign, or day of the week.
With six countries, hundreds of frontline employees, and a constant stream of seasonal launches, visual merchandising updates, and operational deadlines flowing from HQ, Selected needed more than good intentions. They needed a solid infrastructure. For years, the primary tools connecting the HQ and shops were email, phone calls, and messaging apps. The result was unpredictable.
Campaigns got lost before launch
Campaign briefs arrived in inboxes alongside hundreds of other emails. Store managers read them at different times, in different contexts, with no way for HQ to know what had been seen, understood, or acted on. Seasonal launches could risk delays if someone missed a message.
Daniel Birkelund, Retail Manager for Selected’s Danish stores, puts it plainly:
“Everything was on email and calls, and maybe it could be forgotten, or someone missed something.”
Andreas, Store Manager at Selected’s Fisketorvet location, describes the confusion of not knowing which platform to use for what. Should a team update go to email? WhatsApp? Messenger? Every store made its own call. Nothing was centralized.
From patchwork to playbook
Selected brought everything into their made-to-measure Relesys solution: campaign briefs, visual merchandising guidelines, to-do lists, calendars, daily updates, and a social feed for cross-store communication. All accessible from the phone that every store employee already carries in their pocket.
Three things changed almost immediately:
Campaign execution became trackable
HQ now pushes visual merchandising guidelines and campaign deadlines directly into each store’s calendar and to-do list. Store teams confirm execution in the app. HQ does not need to wonder whether the brief was opened or whether stores executed it; everything is trackable and actionable.
Store checks created a real feedback loop
Every two weeks, store teams photograph their floor setup and submit it through the app. HQ reviews the images, provides feedback on whether the store aligns with the current strategy, and closes the loop. This is more than just a compliance exercise: it is a live, visual conversation between HQ and each store about what “good” looks like.
As the brand evolves, the stakes keep rising. Selected recently launched a capsule collection with Hôtel Amour in Paris, a 30+ piece collaboration featuring bolder colorways and expressive graphics designed to generate buzz and visual storytelling on the shop floor. New retail locations in Amsterdam, Antwerp, and Bruges are expanding the footprint. Every new store and collaboration makes this ongoing visual alignment even more critical for the business.
Managers started delegating with confidence
With tasks and to-do lists visible to the entire team, store managers began assigning specific responsibilities to individual team members. Daniel describes this as a shift in empowerment: team members take ownership of execution in ways they simply could not when instructions lived in someone else’s inbox.
The culture shift that no dashboard captures
The operational improvements are clear. But what stands out in how Selected uses Relesys is that it goes beyond execution speed.
Daniel runs a weekly competition across all Danish Selected stores. The challenge: which store delivers the biggest receipt of the week? Teams post their results, colleagues across stores like, comment, and celebrate each other. It is the kind of peer-driven energy that turns isolated stores and their teams into a connected network, competing with each other and motivating each other along their journey.
This is what Daniel means when he talks about community. Not as a corporate value on a poster, but as a daily practice built into how his team operates:
“We can create this community within the store teams. That’s the way I like leading my team, as a community. We are all in this together.”
Andreas describes a similar shift from his perspective on the shop floor. As a store manager, he does not see his retail manager or HQ colleagues in person very often, and he feels that the app helps close that distance. In the in-app group chat, he sends his team daily sales numbers, along with a quick take on what went well and what to improve. It is a small habit, but it means the team starts every shift with common knowledge that, ultimately, brings them together.
What the numbers show
Today, 86% of Selected’s employees are active on the platform, with 292 users and over 22,000 sessions, a clear sign that people find it genuinely useful and not simply a nice-to-have.
When asked what would happen if Relesys disappeared tomorrow, Daniel did not hesitate: the team would fall back on email and phone. They would lose speed and the ability to create impact across stores.
Without the app, Andrea’s days would be dominated by computer sessions, writing emails, and sitting in his office, rather than being on the floor with his teams and customers.
What this means for multi-store fashion retail
Selected’s story is not about replacing email with an app. It is about what becomes possible when HQ and the store floor operate on the same platform, in real time, with shared visibility. When strategy and execution are in sync.
This means campaigns land with deadlines attached; store execution is photographed and reviewed; and team members grow into new responsibilities because tasks are visible and trackable. And across 26 stores in six countries, a weekly competition turns individual store performance into a shared celebration.
Bestseller is scaling fast. 3,100 stores across 47 countries and growing. For every brand in that portfolio, the challenge is the same: how do you keep brand consistency, execution quality, and team culture when you are adding stores faster than you can fly people out to visit them?
Selected’s answer is clear. Give every person the same tool, information, and rhythm. The gap between strategy and execution does not close on its own; it closes by design.
