Leap–Endear Alliance Elevates Clienteling for Physical Retail

Retailers are doubling down on physical stores, especially in luxury and mid-market segments, where high-touch service still drives 84% of U.S. retail sales. A new partnership between Leap and Endear aims to strengthen that advantage by blending human expertise with real-time customer data.

As pressure mounts to deliver premium, personalized shopping experiences, brands increasingly need physical stores that do more than transact. They need spaces that build loyalty, deepen relationships, and generate measurable ROI.

A new partnership between physical retail platform provider Leap and retail CRM vendor Endear gives retailers that edge — especially heading into the busiest shopping season of the year. The Leap–Endear integration equips store teams with a complete toolkit to optimize both presence and performance.

Leap manages every aspect of physical retail, from real estate to staffing. At the same time, Endear equips sales associates with data-driven, personalized clienteling tools — enabling high-touch relationships built on customer insight rather than guesswork.

The result is an omnichannel experience that supports a human-centered, relationship-driven approach designed for long-term growth.

The collaboration arrives at a pivotal moment. Holiday foot traffic is expected to strengthen, and total U.S. retail sales are projected to surpass $1 trillion for the first time — up from $976.1 billion last year, according to the National Retail Federation (NRF). The challenge for brands is turning that momentum into loyalty, insight, and long-term customer value.

Bridging Online and In-Store Engagement

According to Leigh Sevin, co-founder and CEO of Endear, personalized customer engagement is more than a marketing trend. It is the future of retail and the core of its operations.

“Our work with Leap makes it possible for store teams to go beyond the transaction and truly maximize every customer interaction. Together, we’re giving retailers the tools to connect with shoppers in the moments that matter most and drive real results,” she told CRM Buyer.

Leap lets brands rapidly establish a physical storefront presence without taking on all of the risk, such as leases, staffing, and ops, so the brand’s online audience can discover and build a relationship with the brand through a local, in-person touchpoint, added Jon Levy, executive vice president for Retail Success at Leap.

Rather than treating stores as an afterthought to e-commerce, Leap positions them as fully integrated channels in the customer journey.

“Our partnership with Endear gives store associates the tools to treat local customers like real omnichannel shoppers, backed by insight from their online behavior, sending them personalized messages, and following up after visits or transactions,” he told CRM Buyer.

Leap’s Shopify POS collects key customer and sales data — including contact details, shopping intent, preferences, and motivations — and immediately synchronizes it with the brand’s e-commerce data. The result: every shopper is represented by a unified, detailed profile.

“Our retail teams use Endear to add qualitative notes and nurture relationships post-visit, communicating about new collections or events. All of this is in addition to Leap’s platform approach to retail, which combines proprietary omnichannel technology with individualized insights to help brands optimize every interaction — from labor planning to inventory assortment, and more,” Levy explained.

Putting E-Commerce Behaviors to Work In-Store

Customers’ online actions meaningfully shape how store associates engage with them in person through Endear’s tools. Sevin emphasized Leap’s commitment to giving store teams the same level of customer insight typically reserved for e-commerce operations.

“When a customer walks in, associates have an immediate data advantage. They see what the customers like, how often they buy, and critically, what they’re looking for next,” Levy offered.

This context allows associates to continue the relationship seamlessly — offering informed recommendations, providing relevant updates, and making the in-store experience feel personalized and purposeful. According to Levy, this is what drives loyalty, repeat visits, and deeper engagement.

That same interconnected data helps retailers measure product loyalty. Sevin noted that Endear considers loyalty to be a pattern of ongoing behaviors — not just repeat purchases, but also responses to outreach, appointment bookings, message engagement, and overall lifetime value.

“We look at repeat purchases, yes, but we also go deeper into how often customers engage with outreach, whether they book appointments, if they open or respond to messages, and their overall lifetime value,” he explained.

Clienteling as Built-In Marketing

Endear identifies campaign opportunities that strengthen loyalty journeys and influence key customer metrics. Examples include:

• Guiding first-time shoppers toward their second purchase,
• increasing average order value by driving appointment bookings, and
• elevating VIPs with exclusive experiences that affect lifetime value.

“For brands, Leap becomes the enabler of this strategy and Endear becomes the solution to activate and measure its impact,” Sevin said.

With integrated data, brands can evaluate all touchpoints side by side. Instead of simply asking whether a customer bought again, retailers gain visibility into the entire loyalty arc. These patterns of engagement and relationship-building, Sevin noted, are what ultimately drive sustainable, long-term growth.

Unified Data Powers Smarter Marketing

Driving traffic, loyalty, and repeat purchasing is critical for brick-and-mortar success. The Leap–Endear integration simplifies the operational challenges that often arise when brands move into physical retail — real estate, staffing, data management, and analytics.

Levy emphasized how the partnership transforms stores into relationship-building hubs focused on generating traffic and repeat purchases. Store teams can instantly act on customer preferences, delivering personalized outreach that gives shoppers a compelling reason to return.

“This combination of operational efficiency and personalized clienteling directly drives brick-and-mortar loyalty and repeat business, a powerful advantage their online channel alone cannot achieve,” he said.

Metrics That Matter Most

How the combination platform monitors metrics is a critical part of creating the desired brick-and-mortar relationship. Levy focused on two factors that highlight the power of the brick-and-mortar relationship:

• Omnichannel customers deliver the highest lifetime value (LTV). Shoppers who buy both in-store and online typically generate two to three times the value of e-commerce-only customers. Clienteling strengthens those relationships and moves more of them into repeat-buyer territory.
• In-store repeat purchase rate tracks the percentage of customers who are engaged by a store team (through an Endear message or event) and return to that physical location for a second or third purchase.

“Brands can derive significant ROI from activating these high-value segments,” Levy said.

For brands with a large fleet, clienteling efforts by Leap’s store teams using Endear can generate $60,000 to $100,000 or more in attributable monthly sales. Associates achieve this lift by using Endear to convert customers into high-LTV omnichannel shoppers and to bring loyal customers back both in-store and online.

Balancing Efficiency and Personalization

According to Levy, the beauty of the partnership is that it combines the foundational principles of good retail with the tools modern brands need to succeed today. In practice, that balance matters: when it comes to personalization, just because you can doesn’t always mean you should.

“While Endear provides templates and recommendations for customer messaging that align with a brand’s voice/style, Leap ensures store associates can customize the message using notes and preferences from the customer, and informally communicate with the customer,” he concluded.

When store teams follow up, the message feels personal rather than automated — because it comes from the associate who actually helped the shopper. This, Levy noted, is what creates an immediate connection and lays the groundwork for lasting customer relationships.