Marc O'Polo's runway revolution for the digital age

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

The fashion industry constantly moves - it flows and shifts with brands navigating the ever-changing landscape of consumer demands, trends, and digital experiences. Being held back, however, by a system that works against you instead of with you is not one of them. Driven to create better customer experiences, Marc O'Polo knew off-the-rack wouldn't do. Their customers deserve a tailor-made experience. After switching from their legacy system and relaunching with Storyblok, they finished their global localization push across 37 markets in record time.

Accelerating toward global expansion

• A prototype to turn the tide: Despite being in the middle of a relaunch with their previous legacy system that was set up 5 months prior, Marc O’Polo’s team got to work, taking advantage of Storyblok’s Free Trial, to build and produce a fully functional prototype in just 48 hours. The task was daunting; something similar took almost 4 months with the legacy system they had in place then. This helped convince internal stakeholders such as their developers, marketers, and project managers of the simplicity and literal “click of a button.”
• Lightning-speed implementation: Just 14 days after the initial prototype, Marc O’Polo completely implemented across 6 languages and 37 storefronts to replace their legacy system.
• Easy with no learning for new users: Marc O’Polo’s team was able to jump off the diving board with a splash into their new setup immediately and get working with zero onboarding time on managing content, promotions, merchandising, redirects, and shop configuration.

Chic features that bridge fashion and modernity

• Speaking the same tech framework: What makes it so simple to migrate to Storyblok? Marc O’Polo’s developers can simply match their existing stack of VueJS and NuxtJS and move over seamlessly.
• The real-time Visual Editor: An authentic WYSIWYG experience enables Marc O’Polo’s marketers in their work to see any changes in real time without any developer intervention.
• Localization capabilities: Marc O’Polo speaks your language. The content team is able to organize their 37 different storefronts in 6 languages for different campaigns and pages for global roll-out.
• Modular content structure: Reusable content can be cloned and structured across Marc O’Polo’s various campaigns and pages for each of their markets while maintaining brand consistency.
• Streamline collaboration: Teams can focus on creative tasks instead of working on workarounds.
• Content Governance options: Whether it’s scheduling content or releases, creating customized workflows and pipelines to help navigate users where they need to be in the system.
• A best-of-breed approach: Marc O’Polo’s developers can easily integrate any new technology or external tools, as well as in-house developed ones. This means powering a robust POS system with commercetools, as well as AWS for hosting, quickly and simply.

Designing for the new era of customer experiences

Born in Stockholm and Düsseldorf in 1967, Marc O’Polo is a contemporary lifestyle fashion brand. The brand manages multiple eCommerce storefronts in multiple countries and languages. As a modern brand, their previous legacy was holding them back against the new wave of eCommerce experiences taking place. Marc O’Polo’s quick turnaround from prototype to launch is a testament to simple migration and a best-of-breed approach that facilitates an organization’s move to bringing great customer experiences.

Weaving away from legacy challenges

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:

Unlocking the full potential eCommerce experience with Storyblok

Marc O'Polo updated their online store by revamping the frontend and eCommerce backend (commercetools). 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. Marc O’Polo’s developers and content managers can now strut the runway to fast content and fashion experiences.