Technology to Power Personalization

High-end luxury accessory brands live in a fiercely competitive and fragmented marketplace, where authenticity and exceptional quality are table stakes. Founded in 1987, Anya Hindmarch is a luxury brand that personifies creativity, modern craftsmanship, and personalization. The company decided that global expansion would be a major part of its strategic growth, however it needed to maintain the unique, personalized services that have become the hallmark of its success.

For years, Anya Hindmarch’s popular ecommerce website had received plaudits for its modern and distinctive user interface, mixing time-honored craftsmanship with cutting-edge technology to create unique and compelling experiences for customers. However, the company’s back-end transaction engine was difficult to manage and maintain. Its outdated infrastructure hampered growth, delayed the launch of new capabilities, and prevented customers from interacting with the brand using their preferred channels. Anya Hindmarch partnered with Astound to migrate the site to the latest Demandware (now Salesforce Commerce Cloud) platform to reinforce its already strong customer experience with a powerful ecommerce framework.

Linking marketing, commerce, sales, and service to create and nurture high-value, lifelong customer relationships requires a holistic view of every customer profile, so that each shopper feels unique, valued, and welcome. As the company expands into new markets, and as its customers become more discerning, Anya Hindmarch is doubling down on what these customers have asked for: accurate, knowledgeable, and contextual interactions. As a result, the company has solidified its reputation as the go-to luxury accessories retailer, while capitalizing on global growth. We preserved the essential back-end components of the system, such as the ability for customers to personalize their purchases with their own handwriting and drawings, while optimizing for mobile users and connecting the digital experience to their retail stores.

Our technical team rebuilt Anya Hindmarch’s ecommerce platform using newer technology, streamlining the upgrade process and simplifying maintenance. We also integrated a new payments service provider to support multiple global currencies and seven new payment options. Anya Hindmarch relies heavily on rich media content and imagery in its product pages to drive sales. The team worked diligently to ensure that this content rendered correctly on all types of devices.

With an important sales season rapidly approaching, it was essential that Anya Hindmarch’s new website go live and be fully operational in time. We worked closely with Anya Hindmarch’s team to fast-track the project and bring the new site online by the target date.

Migrating Anya Hindmarch to the latest Salesforce Commerce Cloud platform streamlines the content-creation process, making it much easier for the retailer’s creative teams to manage and upload new content to the website. The new omnichannel offering enables a “click-and-collect” retail model that bridges the physical and virtual worlds, enabling new types of synergy between online and in-store experiences. More importantly, the site simplifies purchases for the brand’s expanding base of mobile, socially connected customers.

“We met Astound’s creative design lead on day one, and we had a close relationship with the entire development team throughout the process,” reports Liz Rawlinson, associate digital director at Anya Hindmarch. “It was reassuring to know that we could contact them any time, and it was a key part of what made this project run so smoothly. We have already retained Astound for the next project.”

• Astound met an aggressive development timeline to launch the new site before a big retail sale event.
• The new platform simplifies the rollout of country-specific campaigns with localized commerce services.
• All consumer experiences are optimized for each type of device, including laptops, tablets, and mobile phones.