Fashion loyalty is about passion, personality, and identity. Honestly? Few brands embody that better than Paul Smith, one of British fashion’s most distinctive independent houses, with over 120 shops across 50 countries.
Its reputation rests on individuality, wit, stunning design, and a founder who is, famously, a lifelong collector.
That habit became the philosophy behind the Paul Smith loyalty program, Collectors Club, now one of fashion’s most distinctive rewards programs, built on Antavo AI Loyalty Cloud’s hybrid points and tiers structure around a dual-stamp system.
Since launch, the results have been hard to ignore:
- 85.1% faster opt-in to first purchase for members who redeemed their welcome gift, compared to those who didn’t.
- 150% increase in year-over-year purchase frequency for engaged top-tier members.
- 12% AOV lift for entry-tier customers, comparing the same customer before and after opt-in.
Ready to explore the exact solutions leading up to these results? Download our in-depth Paul Smith case study now!
What Is the Paul Smith Loyalty Program?
The Paul Smith loyalty program is a hybrid points and tiers program, built on Antavo AI Loyalty Cloud, that runs on a dual-stamp mechanic instead of blanket discounts.
Members earn redeemable stamps that function as cashback on every purchase, while climbing through a four-tier structure that unlocks a growing set of perks the longer they stay engaged.
It’s designed to reward frequency and in-store behavior specifically, without training customers to wait for a markdown.
The Story Behind Collectors Club
The program’s name and mechanics come straight from the brand’s own DNA. Sir Paul Smith is, personally, a lifelong collector, and his Covent Garden office is filled with objects gathered on his travels or sent in by customers.
Collectors Club translates that instinct into a digital stamp book that customers fill up the same way he does.
The 3 Biggest Challenges Paul Smith Was Facing
Before launching its loyalty program, Paul Smith had three major challenges most premium retailers will recognize.
- Turn a first purchase into a second and third.
- Increase in-store foot traffic while empowering staff with customer data they’d never had.
- Keep engagement high between purchases, so the brand stays part of a customer’s world even when they aren’t actively shopping.
Solutions Empowered by Antavo’s Technology
Collectors Club was built to solve for all three, using a dual-stamp mechanic, a 4-tier structure, and playful gamified challenges, emphasizing the art and passion of collecting, instead of leaning on the blanket discounting a premium brand like Paul Smith wants to avoid.
“I like to work with Antavo because it’s API-first, so it gives us a lot of flexibility to design whatever features we want. We have a digital stamp book that we want customers to be able to collect stamps for, and the program itself to be as premium and as Paul Smith as possible, and Antavo allows us to do so.”
Cashback In Premium Fashion?! Why Not?
Every purchase earns a redeemable stamp worth real cashback, sitting inside that four-tier structure with points-based thresholds that work identically across Paul Smith’s eight currencies, managed through Antavo’s Tier Management Module.
From there, things get even more interesting. Special edition stamps, tied to specific stores, product lines, or personal milestones, perfectly embody the gamified joy of collecting and engagement between purchases.
Using Antavo’s Mobile Wallet, members now carry a digital pass that changes design as they climb tiers, with location-based nudges when they’re near a store.
“I think the most valuable part of the new loyalty program is giving store staff meaningful visibility on customers. Once customers show their Wallet Pass, staff members are able to see their purchase history, their preferred size, and whether they have shopped online before. Those details are very valuable, so then store staff can provide true personalized service on the shop floor. And we wouldn’t be able to do that without Antavo.”
But it’s just the tip of the iceberg!
- What was the exact strategy behind building out the tier structure?
- What benefits ended up actually activating customers?
- What solution enables instant and seamless in-store identification?
Make sure to check out our case study, which includes the full breakdown on how Paul Smith achieved loyalty program success!
Outstanding Results
From first-time buyers to certified collectors
Since launch, Collectors Club has measurably shortened the path from first purchase to habit – and turned top-tier engagement into some of the strongest spend and frequency lifts in the program’s data.
Faster onboarding, stronger retention
Comparing members who redeemed their welcome gift to those who didn’t:
- 85.1% faster opt-in to first purchase (1.49 vs. 10.02 days)
- 21.8% faster first to second purchase (26.81 vs. 34.27 days)
- 36.1% faster opt-in to second purchase (28.30 vs. 44.28 days)
Branded activations drive outsized top-tier results
Comparing engaged* top-tier members to their own performance – without the loyalty program – the previous year:
- 78% increase in year-over-year spend
- 150% increase in year-over-year purchase frequency
- 34% higher AOV for engaged Smithy-tier members vs. non-engaged Smithy-tier peers
In-store retail events lift entry and mid tiers for engaged members
- 91% YoY spend increase for Newcomer-tier members
- 150% YoY frequency increase for Newcomer-tier members
- 13% YoY spend growth across all tiers
- 55% YoY transaction growth across all tiers
Program-wide results, pre- vs. post-opt-in
- 12% AOV lift for entry-level customers, comparing the same customer before and after joining Collectors Club
- 17-18% increase in purchase frequency for top-tier customers, comparing the same customer before and after joining
Together, the numbers tell a consistent story: Engagement, not just enrollment, is what moves the needle, and Collectors Club is built to reward exactly that.
Awards and Nominations
Collectors Club has already won two D&AD Wood Pencils, including D&AD Awards 2026 recognition for New Brand Identity and Digital Experience Design (shoutout to Limesharp).
It’s also shortlisted for Best Retail Loyalty Program of the Year Europe, Non-Food, at the European Loyalty Awards 2026, alongside Antavo’s nomination for Best Supplier/Vendor Innovation Europe.
Technology Behind Collectors Club
Collectors Club runs on Antavo’s Tier Management, Challenges, Contest Lite, and Rewards Management modules, all working together inside one system.
At the center sits Workflows, which handles birthday rewards, tier-up milestones, and coupon assignments visually, in a few clicks, without waiting on developers for every change.
Elevating in-store visits and helping store staff provide a truly personalized experience to customers is Antavo’s easily customizable Mobile Wallet Pass.
Antavo’s API-based integration then keeps the rest of the ecosystem in sync, passing data to and from Paul Smith’s point-of-sale system in-store and online, in real time.
In Partnership With Klaviyo, Limesharp, and Cegid
For Paul Smith’s marketing team, every stamp earned, tier gained, or coupon claimed becomes a story worth telling, and Klaviyo is where that story gets sent.
Through Antavo’s Klaviyo integration, loyalty data lands the moment it changes, ready for fast, behavior-based segmentation instead of relying on past purchases alone, letting campaigns launch straight from loyalty data with no developer queue to wait on.
Two more partners round out the stack:
- Cegid is Paul Smith’s point-of-sale system, used across all physical stores, and Antavo connects directly to it to handle member enrollment and coupon redemption at the till.
- Limesharp is the development agency behind the Collectors Club front-end experience, building the customer-facing features, like the pending-stamp view, that bridge Antavo’s backend logic with what members actually see.
Frequently Asked Questions About the Paul Smith Loyalty Program
Why do premium and luxury brands avoid points-for-discount loyalty programs?
Discount-led loyalty programs train customers to wait for a deal, which erodes margin and undercuts the full-price positioning a premium brand depends on. Collectors Club sidesteps this by making stamps functionally similar to cashback while pairing them with non-monetary collectible stamps that carry no discount signal at all. The lesson generalizes: a premium brand can still reward frequency without training customers to associate the brand with markdowns.
Why did Paul Smith build a stamp-collecting mechanic into Collectors Club?
The stamp mechanic isn’t an arbitrary gamification choice, it’s pulled directly from Paul Smith’s own history as a lifelong collector, whose Covent Garden office is filled with objects gathered from customers and travels alike. Collectors Club translates that personal habit into a digital stamp book members fill up the same way he does, which is why the concept resonated enough that an independent fan community asked for a custom stamp of their own. For any brand designing a program from scratch, this is the model worth copying: root the mechanic in something true about the brand, not a generic template.
How does Paul Smith use its Mobile Wallet pass to personalize the in-store experience?
Paul Smith’s Mobile Wallet pass, built on Antavo’s technology, lets staff scan a member’s pass at the till and instantly see purchase history, sizing, and tier, turning a walk-in into a recognized customer on the spot. This matters because Paul Smith’s in-store shoppers already outspend online customers, so closing the staff visibility gap protects the brand’s highest-value channel specifically. It’s a useful blueprint for any retailer where the richest customer relationships happen on the shop floor rather than online.
Why does welcome gift redemption matter so much for loyalty program retention?
The data behind the Paul Smith loyalty program shows redeeming a welcome gift correlates with a dramatically faster path to a second purchase, and that pattern holds across most loyalty programs, not just this one. A redeemed welcome gift is effectively the first proof point that the program has real value, which shortens the psychological distance to the next purchase. Any brand launching or relaunching a program should treat welcome gift redemption rate as an early leading indicator, not a vanity metric.
Conclusion
The Paul Smith loyalty program proves that a premium brand doesn’t need blanket discounts to build real retention. Instead, it built a program as personality-led as the brand itself, and the numbers, from faster second purchases to stronger top-tier engagement, back it up.
Antavo is the AI loyalty and incentives platform that brings together loyalty, promotions, and agentic AI to turn customers into regulars: the customers who come back on their own, buy more often, and bring others with them. For more than a decade, Antavo has powered identity-led loyalty strategies for brands including SKIMS, Paul Smith, KFC, Flying Tiger Copenhagen, and Hyatt’s Inclusive Collection. Marketers build, change, and launch programs and promotions themselves, without waiting on engineering.
If you’re tired of paying to win the same customers twice, book a call with our experts and see how Antavo turns them into regulars.
Download our in-depth Paul Smith case study and see exactly how the dual-stamp mechanic, tier structure, and Mobile Wallet integration work together to drive results.
*Engaged loyalty members are customers who have attended branded or in-store events. Performance was measured in the 3-month period post-activation.
