C.L. Seifert - 3D Configurator - Visual eCommerce

C.L. Seifert Implements the complete Enterprise Visual eCommerce Platform

Enterprise Visual eCommerce for C.L. Seifert

In the first week after the launch of the new webshop in Finland, C.L. Seifert achieved the best sales with direct customer sales. That success was then solely due to the advanced 3D configurator, which allowed students (B2C) to quickly customize and visualize their student caps. Personalized school shops are now also online. With these, schools (B2B) temporarily offer their students a fully personalized range of caps, prices, and content. Since the launch, the Finland shop has generated 10% more online revenue. Following Finland, launches in Denmark and Sweden followed. Each country is set up with its own business rules, payment providers, content, and products.

Challenge C.L. Seifert and AJAT Group

Future-Proof personalization platform for the entire group

C.L. Seifert is part of the Ajat Group, along with ABC-Gruppen and Crownstudent. After realizing the headless e-commerce platform with a 3D configurator for Crownstudent in 2020, the management decided that their future lay in a generic platform for the entire organization. They engaged Proud Nerds to implement Visual eCommerce, enabling extensive personalization and customization. This offers an unparalleled user experience. A platform that allows each company to operate with its own business processes, features, and market approach.

C.L. Seifert: Student hats and more

.L. Seifert is a family business that has been around for over 150 years. The main product of C.L. Seifert is a graduation cap that can be fully personalized with prints, colors, and embroideries. In Scandinavia, it is a long-standing tradition to celebrate graduation lavishly. A week-long celebration with caps, flags, and music. C.L. Seifert provides products for the complete graduation party experience.

Beyond online sales

Omnichannel strategy

While Crownstudent exclusively has a webshop, C.L. Seifert adopts an omnichannel approach. Even during events, such as at schools, they locally promote their products. However, sales ultimately take place through the webshop. Therefore, the online experience is an extension of the local approach.

What is Enterprise Visual eCommerce?

Enterprise Visual eCommerce is a "headless" – and therefore lightning-fast – platform for product experience. This, along with a good User Experience, ensures higher conversion. Additionally, the platform offers extensive possibilities for personalization and data integration. Below, various functionalities of the platform are briefly explained, along with their specific application for C.L. Seifert.

Additional challenge

Personalization agreements with schools

Schools and student associations are eager to assist their students with purchasing student caps. They often seek uniformity in appearance, so that all students from the school, for example, have a cap with the school's name. C.L. Seifert makes special deals with these schools. The platform provides an automated, personalized offer for the students of such a school, with a standardized basic offer of the cap, special prices, personalized content, and the look & feel of the school.

In short

Too ambitious for standard solutions

C.L. Seifert is ambitious. The company has grand aspirations in the field of personalization. Its ambitions also extend far in terms of marketing automation and email marketing. These are wishes that cannot be easily fulfilled with standard offerings from platforms like Magento. Moreover, the Ajat Group wants to remain flexible and scalable in the future to respond to trends and developments. They do not want custom solutions that need to be rebuilt in a few years.

Solution

Headless commerce platform

Proud Nerds found the solution in utilizing headless technology within the Visual eCommerce platform. A platform that brings out the best of Magento and WordPress, using only what C.L. Seifert needs. Additionally, the CRM, ERP systems, and C.L. Seifert's favorite marketing applications are integrated into the platform: tools like Active Campaign and Sendgrid. The advantage of a headless architecture is that the components are decoupled. The different microservices (each piece of functionality) operate independently of each other, which contributes to the system's agility and speed.

Control and management by C.L. Seifert

Business Manager

The Business Manager that we developed and set up is the heart of the platform. It is the solution to C.L. Seifert's personalization challenge. In this Business Manager, the company can store all school data, all personalization rules: the personalized product, selling prices, content, and more.

And we would like to highlight some more features of the platform:

The platform includes a component kit that always incorporates the latest UX trends. As a result, the webshop always has extensive and user-friendly design options, such as a drop-down shopping cart, attractive button styles, and swipable components.
C.L. Seifert, Crownstudent, and ABV Gruppen each have their own branding. Each webshop automatically follows the branding guidelines of the respective brand, thanks to the UI component library. This allows content creators to focus on the quality of their content while the system handles the design.
The platform is developed with a mobile-first approach and provides the experience of a Progressive Web App. Altogether, you can count on excellent performance and user experience.

High performance 3D-configurator

C.L. Seifert offers students an unprecedented number of options to personalize the product. With the 3D configurator, the student can customize the cap entirely to their liking, and the result is continuously visualized in high-quality 3D images. Each time a configuration is saved or added to the shopping cart, the user sees a ‘snapshot’ of their design.

The 3D configurator, which we had already developed for Crownstudent, underwent an optimization process. The click interaction is now even faster. Even during peak loads, the configurator maintains high performance. The configurator has also been included in the personalization effort. A student from a school offering a personalized product sees their school's cap as the default model to further configure.

Experience the C.L. Seifert configurator

Experience the power of personalization for yourself. Take a look at the C.L. Seifert configurator, design your cap, and explore the countless possibilities.

Nerdy stuff

Docker containers improve performance

The hosting of the headless commerce platform is done via so-called Docker containers. A Docker container is a bundled executable file that includes all the code and dependencies. It allows us to deploy and run applications quickly and reliably from any server in the world.

Process

Step by step guidance to go-live

Collaborating with a professional company like C.L. Seifert is a pleasure. In a project of this scale, we at Proud Nerds can showcase our strengths by guiding the client step-by-step through the launch of the complete solution. Our agile approach is indispensable in this. By prioritizing, always keeping the end result in mind, and continuously adjusting based on budget and planning, we succeeded in delivering the right value in the right order within the system.

Proud

Unprecedented page speed and a more than satisfied customer

In February 2022, the first C.L. Seifert webshop went live in Finland. We are still working on additional functionalities to optimally serve all markets. Later this year, the launches in Sweden and Denmark will follow. We are incredibly proud of the unparalleled performance of the platform. It is optimized to the last detail for speed. This is reflected in the measured page speed: we score 98 out of 100 on mobile and 100 out of 100 on desktop. Above all, we are proud of the enthusiastic response from our client, C.L. Seifert, who is truly taking the next step in their online activities with this.

Let's talk

Getting Started with Visual eCommerce

We are curious about your ambitions! We would be happy to explain what Visual eCommerce can mean for you within your eCommerce strategy.