Footasylum is one of the UK’s leading streetwear and sportswear retailers. They have 66 stores, 1,800 employees, and a social media presence that puts them in the global top five on TikTok with 1.4 billion organic views last year.
They clearly know how to talk to their audience. But behind the scenes, two problems were pulling in the opposite direction: staff turnover above 130% and a communication structure that couldn’t reliably get a message from HQ to the shop floor.
At RTS London 2026, Shannon Osman, Retail Director at Footasylum, shared how they tackled both.
Too many systems, too many competing priorities
System and communication overload is a problem every retailer faces at some point, and Footasylum was no exception.
Because every department considered their messages as urgent, store managers were often pulled off the floor to check on updates and information in the back office. Staff were navigating multiple systems, multiple channels, and a constant stream of incoming messages with no clear order of priority.
More communication wasn’t making things better. It was getting in the way of the customer experience.
Ending the telephone game
Before Zipline, messages from HQ would typically filter down through area managers, then store managers, then, eventually, reach the shop floor. By the time communications arrived, they were outdated, changed, or no longer relevant.
For Footasylum, that meant managers across 66 stores all doing things differently, with no way for Shannon to know who was acting on what.
“If you can’t communicate with your staff quickly and efficiently, how are you going to communicate with the customers in the same way?” was the question that triggered Footasylum’s search for the solution.
If you can’t communicate with your staff quickly and efficiently, how are you going to communicate with the customers in the same way?
Raising visibility to improve engagement
“We signed up with Zipline, and it completely changed the way that we work,” Shannon said.
Footasylum brought everything into Zipline — one place for every message, every team, every store. HQ could now reach any team or individual directly. And for the first time, they could see engagement metrics in real time.
That changed how the team worked. Instead of hoping messages landed, they could see it. Shannon lights up at the mention of it: “My team loves tracking the health scores, the readership, the execution.”
Who’s engaging, who’s acting on messages, how every store is performing — all visible, all in one place. For a competitive team, the transparency became its own motivation.
Keeping staff on the floor
Overwhelmed with messages from HQ and questions from customers, store teams were pulled in too many directions. Time that should have been spent on the floor was lost on prioritising communications and looking for answers.
The first solution was to reduce the noise at the source. Footasylum took control of when and how departments could contact stores.
The ops team introduced a communication calendar — each department was assigned days to reach stores so that only timely, relevant communication got through.
Second, they trained Zippy, Zipline’s AI-powered conversational assistant, on their own business knowledge. Returns policies, product availability, whatever comes up mid-shift — “they literally can type it into the device that’s already in their hand,” as Shannon puts it. No disappearing into the back office anymore.
Footasylum’s unique culture
None of this works without the right people, and Footasylum’s new hiring process reflects exactly the kind of culture they’re building.
With 90% of staff being Gen Z — a generation that entered the job market alongside generative AI — the traditional CV had stopped being a useful filter. Shannon scrapped it entirely and replaced it with a 60-second video application.
Today, the ops team and talent development watch the videos from applicants together and vet them. Personality, energy, enthusiasm for the brand — it either comes through or it doesn’t.
Once the right people are in, Footasylum makes sure they have a voice.
When nominating for Retail Employer of the Year, they didn’t have a group of senior managers pick the Store Manager of the Year candidate. They put it to the entire workforce. Over 1,000 staff votes later, the candidate was chosen by the people who actually work alongside them on the floor every day.
Staff who feel heard, valued, and part of something become more invested in the business. The results reflect it — turnover dropped from over 130% to the low 70s.
Internal comms, external impact
Since adopting Zipline, Footasylum’s staff know what’s happening, feel heard, and aren’t buried in fragmented messages. Frontline spends less time searching for answers and more time with the people walking through the door because they understand that the customer experience is only as good as the communication behind it.
