Shiner were a traditional company that operated only B2B, and were one of the first UK companies to bring skateboards over from the US. Today Shiner represent over 20 brands in the European market and distributes to those markets to retailers across the continent. The new direction was to start selling directly to the customer with the brands they represented, and a platform was needed that served multiple sites and brands selling in multiple regions and currencies. The only viable option was Magento Commerce.
The new website took 5 months to complete, and allowed Shiner to sell direct to the customer across Europe, specifically UK, Spain, Germany, France, Italy, Norway, Finland, Denmark & Sweden. There is also an EU generic store to service the whole of Europe. Shiner also make use of the Amasty Store Finder extension to direct customers to partner stores who stock their brands, should a customer want to visit a local store.
Heelys, Santa Cruz, Body Glove & Straye Footwear all operate in 9 different territories, 5 languages, and 5 currencies.
At present the company uses inbuilt Magento functionality, fed directly from Microsoft Dynamics NAV ERP system, assigning the inventory globally across all sites. Shiner integrated directly into Microsoft Dynamics NAV, providing full stock updates, order management, synchronization of product information with the central catalogue. Order status updates and shipment alerts were also provided via integration achieved using The Pixel’s bespoke ERP Connector system - an intermediary system that sits between Magento and any other ERP system. It's flexible and efficient, and allows integration with various data formats that include XML, CSV.
Magento allowed Shiner to achieve the functionality required without multiple website instances. Magento's hierarchical levels were essential in allowing Shiner to achieve the implementation of a build that could manage 20 separate brands. One Magento installation with default settings, that would manage websites with multiple URLs, prices, taxes and currencies, with multiple store fronts and store views, all of which were very different per brand and product range. The option to share customers, products, pricing between stores was also invaluable.
Magento enabled Shiner to:
Magento Cloud allowed quick deployments utilising the CDN to deliver quick response across all European websites. Utilising the CDN meant distributed servers across all of Europe removed the need for customers to be served via UK servers only.
Because of Magento Cloud’s scalable storefronts, Shiner now has the ability offer highly differentiated customer experiences, simplified integration with existing systems and the ability to respond rapidly to changing circumstances. This gave the website the agility to respond to a changing environment, and easily scale to meet unexpected demand. For example, the M2 cloud infrastructure has allowed the company to cater for significant peaks in traffic regardless of visitor volume, important at critical times of year such as Black Friday.
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