Mobile commerce is critical in direct-to-consumer online sales. Founded in 1938, Scarpa has been manufacturing and distributing some of the world’s most well-known and well-respected outdoor retail equipment for decades. Loved by outdoor enthusiasts from the Dolomites to the Sierras, this seminal brand came to HotWax Media in 2009 to develop a direct-to-consumer channel for their category-defining climbing, mountaineering, and skiing gear, and we delivered with a licensed Sixth Sense Commerce system, powered by Apache OFBiz.
Recently, Scarpa revisited mobile commerce as an important channel for their business, and requested that we leverage Sixth Sense Commerce to design and implement a mobile user experience that users would find modern and superb. We delivered a mobile site that meets or exceeds the standards set by the largest companies in the outdoor retail space, and we did it together under an aggressive timeline of about 6 weeks from initial comps to production deployment.
The site delivers an impressive amount of functionality through a smooth and usable mobile interface. Users can easily browse multiple storefronts (five in total, with one each for Scarpa, Edelrid, Koflach, Rottefella, and SkiTrab), navigate and browse category pages, conduct product searches, examine product details, and purchase.
Personally, I appreciate this as an example of a small business leveraging the right partner / technology combination in order to gain an industry-leading mobile channel for a fraction of the cost and in a fraction of the time required by some of its larger competitors. A small- or medium-sized business doesn’t need to spend $3M on a Hybris system, nor labor for months on end, in order to empower their customers with industry-leading digital commerce. Carefully investing in the right technology and partner relationship can truly empower SMBs to not only compete with but clearly out-perform their much larger competitors.
It gives me great pleasure to see Scarpa benefit from this new mobile site, and I’m also very proud of the collaboration and cooperation among various team members that made it possible. Here at HotWax, we genuinely enjoy our working relationships with the dedicated folks at Scarpa, and I look forward to many productive and enjoyable years to come.
