Marc O'Polo's journey to create content-driven experiences

• Headquarters: Stephanskirchen, Germany
• Technology: Vue.js, Nuxt

Marc O'Polo is a fashion brand that wanted to create a better experience for its customers online. They were using a legacy system that made it hard to do this. The team decided to work with Storyblok to completely relaunch their website. They built a prototype in 2 days and launched it in 14. Today, the brand uses Storyblok to manage content in 6 languages and 40 countries, to promote sales, manage their store, and more.

The initial challenge: Legacy content management

Marc O'Polo used a legacy system to manage content and run their online shops. However, the system was hard to work with and made it difficult to make changes. This made it hard to maintain the brand's eCommerce shops in different languages.

Marc O’Polo faced many challenges with its monolithic setup:

• Restrictive editing: The system did not provide a consistent editing experience. This applied to all business users - developers and marketers. As a result, it slowed down creativity and restricted access to omnichannel capabilities.
• Heavy system upkeep: The old system needed a lot of upkeep, which took up a lot of time for developers. Even changing the title of a product was a challenge in the old system.
• Inability to develop "locally": The system's restrictions meant that developing locally was not an option. Each new piece of code had to be pushed into a remote system, further slowing down the team's go-to-market implementation.
• Steep learning curve for non-tech users: Content editors had a hard time using the old system. Making changes and creating new modules were always a challenge..

For Johannes and other developers at Marc O'Polo the lack of flexibility and powerful features were major pain points:

Take Two: Relaunch of the webshop and another CMS implementation

Marc O'Polo updated their online store by revamping the frontend and eCommerce backend (About You). They tackled content by finding a new CMS solution. The goal was to transition from a monolithic suite to a cutting-edge API-based software solution. To achieve this, they chose a headless system for the new CMS. This could provide flexibility to developers and help non-technical users create custom content.

While looking for a new API-based content solution, the brand implemented a new CMS to replace the legacy monolithic system. Yet, it became clear that the system could not meet the brand's desires. The CMS restricted omnichannel publishing, localizing content, collaboration, and releasing products quickly.

Because the team was in the midst of a major relaunch project, everyone was too busy to consider yet another new CMS. However, Johannes believed it was worth exploring. The goal was to provide an intuitive system for developers and content editors. After searching for alternatives, he discovered Storyblok.

Working with Storyblok: More than a CMS

For Johannes and Marc O’Polo, the list of features that Storyblok offered was a perfect fit for their original requirements. These included:

• Storyblok's headless approach: Matching with their stack of VueJS and NuxtJS for a best-of-breed approach.
• The real-time Visual Editor: An authentic WYSIWYG experience that enables marketers in their work
• Localization capabilities: Helping the content team to publish in 6 languages in over 40 countries.
• A modular approach to content structure: Offers marketers and business owners an easy and intuitive way to manage content.
• Streamline collaboration: Teams can focus on creative tasks instead of working on workarounds.
• Content Governance options: Scheduling content, releases, customized workflows and pipelines.
• A best-of-breed approach: Easy integration of any new technology or external tools, as well as ones developed in-house.

However, there was a big problem. The team were still in the middle of relaunching their website and had just set up a new system 5 months prior. This meant getting everyone to switch to another CMS would be hard.

Johannes had an idea, but Maria, the Technical Project Manager, was skeptical. She didn't want to start another project during the ongoing relaunch. A challenge was created for Johannes to build their most complex content modules in Storyblok in just 2 days before making any decisions.

Taking advantage of Storyblok's free trial, Johannes immediately got to work. The task was daunting; something similar took almost 4 months with the CMS they had in place then.

After only 48 hours, Johannes finished with the prototype in Storyblok, and everything was set up and running smoothly. For Maria, this was what every team needed - an agile system that helps users get things done and doesn't get in their way. The developers and the Technical Project Manager agreed, and the other teams were quickly convinced. In just 14 days, they had a completely new CMS in place.

Unlocking the full potential eCommerce experience with Storyblok

With Storyblok set up, developers and content managers can now exercise much freedom.

For business users like Sidonie or developers like Johannes, Storyblok goes beyond what a traditional CMS is supposed to do.

Different teams use the CMS for various things. This includes managing content, promotions, merchandising, redirects, and shop configuration. Storyblok lets developers work with familiar frameworks, so they can add new capabilities quickly. The real-time Visual Editor and component-based approach also make editing easy. As a result, content editors can create new landing pages and publish or customize content on their own.