Online Clothing Store Rossignol Reached the Peak of Customer Experience
4 Months to Launch in 8 Countries. The Magento eCommerce platform doubled the brand’s turnover compared to the previous year, and exceeded their goals for online sales by almost 25 percent.
+180% Online Sales Growth
Established over a hundred years ago in France, the iconic winter sports brand, Rossignol, was one of the first companies to produce plastic skis. Drawing from a century of expertise and a close relationship with the champions of winter sports, Rossignol has created a range of hi-tech equipment and clothing, from ski goggles to snowboards. Today, the Rossignol Group comprises nearly a dozen sub-brands, catering to both amateurs and experts of alpine skiing, Nordic skiing, snowboarding, cycling, and trail running.
Like many heritage brands, the Rossignol Group needed to reposition their image to stay relevant. They decided to move away from the company’s rustic traditions, and escape their association with mountain chalets. They launched a fashionable new range aimed at mainstream consumers, including a collaboration with Tommy Hilfiger; but they wanted to switch from B2B to become a consumer-centric company. However, Rossignol’s now defunct solution, RBS Change, made progress impossible. “We had one platform for CMS and another for eCommerce,” explained Damien Hars, Head of Digital Marketing & eCommerce for Rossignol. “Two different platforms to manage one website. It was a nightmare.”
Rossignol, a brand that thrives on extreme challenges, asked their Magento Solution Partner, Synolia, to revolutionize their digital presence. They needed to unify their sub-brands, expand their winning loyalty program, and deliver an unrivaled customer experience, globally. “We had very ambitious plans to launch eCommerce to offer every brand, in every country, in 18 months,” said Hars. To do that, they needed a new platform.
Web merchandisers in Europe and North America are working in the same back office on a daily basis. Everybody feels well coordinated and part of a global team. This is the basis of success!
Damien Hars
Head of Digital Marketing & eCommerce, the Rossignol Group
The new Rossignol web store was created on Magento Commerce (Cloud), which helped to unify their complicated, siloed business with multiple brands running on different backend systems. Rossignol started the project with their bicycle brand, Time, integrating Magento with the company’s backend systems. “Magento is in the middle of everything for us now,” explained Hars. “It’s connected to our ERP, our warehouse system for prep and shipping, and our PIM, to manage all product descriptions…Every person working on eCommerce, from marketing and sales to customer service is using the same platform. It’s perfect,” he added.
To roll out their plans for world domination, Rossignol started by implementing plugins to make international expansion a breeze. They used Owebia for shipping management, an extension that defines shipping rules by country; Maxmind for geo location services; and Hipay, to allow perfect payments in any country. Now, Rossignol fans can order skis and snowboard equipment from almost anywhere in the world. “What I really like about Magento is that we have many plugins and partners that we can easily add,” said Hars. “We’re sure that we’re creating the best in class experience for the consumer.”
The migration to Magento Commerce (Cloud) also allowed Rossignol to re-engineer their loyalty program, “The Club,” which offers customers access to exclusive offers and events. Now, customers accumulate points when they shop in a physical store, or even with a dealer or partner of the brand. Naturally, the program gathers valuable insights about customers’ buying habits, used to optimize the performance of marketing campaigns. “After nine months we’ve increased loyalty, thanks to Magento,” said Hars.
In November of 2017, after just four months, Rossignol launched eCommerce operations in eight countries, four languages, and four currencies. The results were spectacular: “The global navigation and the checkout process is much easier on Magento than it was on our previous platform,” said Hars. “We can see that in the conversion rate.” Management of the web store is also much easier. “For us, it’s just so easy to create attractive pages…and easier to give more autonomy to our merchandising teams in different countries.”
The Magento eCommerce platform doubled the brand’s turnover compared to the previous year, and exceeded their goals for online sales by almost 25 percent. Rossignol’s new eCommerce strategy is paying off as their conversion rate has jumped by 70 percent, partly due to their new UX, and the reliability of the infrastructure provided by Magento Commerce (Cloud). Today, they enjoy much faster response times than those offered by the old platform. And this is just the beginning of Rossignol’s ambitious expansion strategy. Next up is the refresh of their North American store later this year, and the migration of two new brands before the end of the year, Raidlight and Vertical. “Magento is super easy for us, we can just create new stores,” said Hars. “For us it’s just perfect, it’s very good for teamwork.”
With Magento, we have the best of both worlds: Customization of the customer experience with the scalability of a cloud infrastructure.
Damien Hars
Head of Digital Marketing & eCommerce, the Rossignol Group
Originally published at magento.com.
