Ampersand Commerce took the time to understand the scope and complexity of the SKINS business, creating bespoke add-ons within the Magento platform to handle multiple warehouses, price lists, languages and product display requirements. The Ampersand team supports and continues to develop the platform to enable the next phase of our brand's online growth. Grant Bayley, Chief Information Officer, SKINS
Beginning in 2009, our partnership with SKINS has been a successful one. With 2012 marking the two-year anniversary of the brand’s first launch on Magento Enterprise, here is a look back on the technical innovation, user-centred design choices and ecommerce development expertise that has widened SKINS’ ecommerce reach internationally.
SKINS produce compression clothing for athletes. Established in Australia and based in Switzerland, SKINS’ goals for multinational ecommerce expansion truly mirror its global roots. In the beginning, SKINS needed an easily scalable ecommerce solution that would integrate with the company’s current business systems and eventually process transactions across nine different localities, fulfilled from three different distribution locations. With stakeholders based across various markets and disparate time zones, SKINS required an agency partner that could react quickly and understand complex business requirements
SKINS required us to combine multiple channels from FACT-Finder, so that both data about products and data about content displayed within search results.
We built multi-lingual, multi-currency stores for all of SKINS’ core markets. The initial launch on Magento Enterprise in early 2010 included four online storefronts including Australia, UK, Europe and International. Phase two launches included five more: Germany, USA, Japan, China and France.
In early 2012, after nine successful multinational launches, the SKINS team implemented a re-design and restructuring. Along with a new look, SKINS improved the user experience, implementing an interactive size guide to clarify the complicated size requirements of their compression clothing; developed a simplified category structure for easier browsing and better SEO; and integrated with Fact-Finder, providing comprehensive multi-site and multi-lingual search results, bringing together content from Sitefinity and products from Magento. We continue to work together as SKINS widens the scope of its offering across new markets.
The technology that facilitates quick ecommerce expansion into new markets is impressive. Our solution for SKINS used a single integration with SAP.
By integrating with SAP, technological complexity was reduced, therefore reducing the usual costs and risks associated with global expansion.
Other integrations included Sitefinity, the company's .NET CMS, and several payment gateways for different markets.
| Enterprise Resource Planning | SAP |
| CMS | Sitefinity |
| Intelligent Search | Fact-Finder |
| Payment Gateway | PayPal |
| Payment Gateway | ANZ |
| Payment Gateway | Cybersource |
| Payment Gateway | Authorize.net |
