How Oatly built 16 global websites in just two months

Oatly has taken the plant-based dairy world by storm since its inception in the 1990s as one of the world’s biggest alternative milk producers worldwide in over 25 countries. The brand grew continuously and migrated its previous websites from WordPress and ApostropheCMS to Storyblok in an astounding time frame of just two months while putting out MVPs and reiterating existing content to best fit its global audience. 

Key Requirements 

The essential requirements in the search for a new solution that was repeatedly mentioned came from Oatly’s developers. This included: 

• A headless/microservice CMS solution that could allow them to work with components independently while containing a component library that could consequently be modified and built over their growth towards Oatly’s cloud-based infrastructure strategy
• Not having to develop components repeatedly, and instead have the flexibility within their tech stack to implement new tools and integrations easily. Additionally, doing all of that in a programming language of their choice.
• Requesting a simple editor interface that could be easily used by editors globally 
• Seamless adaptability with new technologies.

Solutions

Oatly chose Storyblok as their headless CMS of choice based on:  

• Storyblok’s Visual Editor - allowing Oatly’s creative team to independently manage content and projects, with a real-time view of any edits made
• Being a best-of-breed solution that brings in the very best technologies fitted to Oatly’s needs from eCommerce to localization as they scale for a global market
• The flexibility and freedom that developers can have in using a programming language that they already know rather than having to learn a new one
• Storyblok’s cloud-first headless approach fits into Oatly’s cloud-first strategy
• Reusable content can be cloned and mimicked across various campaigns and pages. This is then applied to all of Oatly’s 16 different sites (Global, Australia, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany/Austria/Switzerland, Hong Kong SAR/China, Iceland, Israel, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom & the United States)
• The organized dashboard can hold a content and asset library 

Oatly has been around since the 1990s and has had a lot of different CMSs. They created a new website for the rebranding in 2012 with WordPress. However, they moved to ApostropheCMS due to their on-page editing tool being in a WYSIWYG format. After the rebranding, Oatly started to become a household name. Before that, Oatly had a completely different graphic profile. The solution was quite basic in terms of tech stack through an open-source Node.js framework. Yet, it was not a solution that could withstand the future that Oatly was looking forward to in the coming years. 

Making the move to Storyblok

Oatly as a company is creatively driven, and thus, needed a higher degree of freedom and flexibility in design, productivity for their developers, ease of use between non-technical and technical people, and the ability to easily onboard developers. 

In all, Oatly sought a solution that could imminently create a trickle-down effect and foster a culture of collaboration, productivity, and creativity in a sort of synergy where everyone’s workflow could fit in their optimal headless CMS.

Storyblok’s unique visual editor, while containing a folder-type organization structure, allowed Oatly’s employees to “recognize themselves” in the organization of the CMS. Ultimately, Oatly’s developers and marketing/creative team were the main decision-makers, seeking to find a balance between development and creativity. Within Oatly, their creative department is the driver behind Oatly’s website, combing through design, content, and user experience in the frontend. In contrast, their development team covered the backend and security of the overall site. Finding such a synergy and ease of collaboration ultimately ticked the boxes for Oatly’s key decision-makers for Storyblok to become their CMS of choice.

Oatly is still in the middle of its digital transformation, with its sights set on translating more pages and localizing its content assets. Adopting and migrating their content to Storyblok meant easily cloning with reusable content to build and migrate their new site up to speed. 

Scalable for global presence: Oatly’s sights on the future

While Oatly’s team has changed over the years, one thing remains - their hunger for growth and scalability for a global presence, such as exploring possibilities for their eCommerce efforts in their US market website and in localizing catalogs and content per region.  

Likewise, the team at Oatly is also in the process of migrating several of their other sites, such as ‘Hey Barista,’ into Storyblok. The company works incrementally to bring out an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) while developing through an agile process and with quality. Each site, content piece, and asset at Oatly is a moving process that is constantly evolving, innovating, and keeping up with its core values of creativity, sustainability, and transparency.

Storyblok was able to help streamline Oatly’s development flow within their digital transformation while bringing simplicity across their teams of non-developers and developers to create a site that is easy to use, creatively designed, and functional. Their landing pages across every region are image-heavy and rich in animation, yet, have been optimized in loading times using Storyblok’s image service, with video hosting integrations from Vimeo.