ONLINE SHOPPING A GROWING TREND FOR LUXURY CONSUMERS
Bluebell is a retailer with a long tradition of marketing and promoting imported products of the highest quality in Japan, China, Hong Kong, Korea, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia. With 50 years of experience in the retail business, it has not only promoted many exclusive lifestyle products such as clothing, accessories, cigar, perfumes and cosmetics, leather goods and homeware, but it has also built them into powerful brands with wide and long-standing recognition. Today with over 50 brands, including big names such as Carven, Moschino, Balmain, Bulgari, Dolce & Gabbana and Jimmy Choo, the company is a major partner in the luxury goods industry with more than 500 points of sale and over 2,100 employees.
Beyond its role as a distributor, Bluebell also works closely with its partners to better promote the brand through various retail channels, including websites. In the past, Bluebell’s websites have been mainly used as storefronts to build awareness of brands and create a “window shopping” experience that would entice customers to the physical stores. In response to the emerging trend of online shopping among Asian consumers, Bluebell decided in 2012 to deploy the Magento eCommerce platform, a feature-rich, open-source, enterprise-class platform that offers a high degree of flexibility and control over user experience, catalog and content management, and functionality of its online stores.
“Traditionally our customers used to visit the store in person to enjoy the ambiance and try out and purchase luxury goods. However, we began to see the online shopping trend take off and become more popular across Asian countries. This prompted the need for our partners to establish their shops online, offer a new service to our customers and a new channel of distribution for our brands. As their distributor and business partner, it is important that Bluebell provides them with a stable e-commerce platform to support their online business in these markets,” said Marc Ardisson, Group Digital Director of Bluebell.
PRIOR TO RACKSPACE
As Bluebell embarked on its journey to build online shopping websites with the Magento eCommerce platform, it also started searching for a trusted and reputable hosting partner that has experience in supporting Magento.
“As soon as we realized that the e-commerce platform could be a game-changer for the business growth of our brands, we knew that we needed to find a hosting partner that could offer a high standard of reliability, security and intensive technical support to make it work. Expertise in the deployment and support of the Magento platform was a key prerequisite. In addition, we wanted our hosting partner to have global presence so that it can support our multi-country platform.”
“After some consideration it became apparent that our existing hosting company would not be able to deliver the SLAs we needed, with a full understanding of our requirements for this development. Availability and an uptime guarantee are crucial criteria for our websites as any downtime would result in disrupting the customer experience and distracting them from engagement on our websites – ultimately impacting our online business,” said Ardisson.
Bluebell had several candidates in mind when sourcing a hosting partner for its e-commerce platform. After consulting its Magento deployment partner, Bluecom, who has used Rackspace’s hosting services for several years, the luxury retailer decided to choose Rackspace. The positive working experience with Rackspace gave Bluecom the confidence to recommend it to its luxury retail customers without hesitation.
“Rackspace’s renowned service quality, its global footprint and its experience and expertise in managing and supporting the Magento platform matched perfectly with our need for a trusted technology partner who can accompany us in our expansion into the e-commerce territory,” Ardisson said.
ENJOYING THE BENEFITS OF RACKSPACE’S DEDICATED HOSTING
Since June 2012, Bluebell has been using Rackspace to host its Magento eCommerce platform and has enjoyed high availability, uptime guarantees and the service reliability that the Rackspace team said it would deliver. Hosting its servers in Rackspace’s data center in Hong Kong is also advantageous because of its proximity to Bluebell’s key markets, namely Japan, China and Hong Kong, and Europe.
“The deployment of Magento eCommerce platform has been very smooth. Thanks to Rackspace’s hosting support, we have been able to provide our customers with a seamless, high quality online shopping experience that matches the prestige of our brand name. As Rackspace offers very high SLAs in availability and uptime guarantees, we feel assured that the instances of downtime will be minimized and that the website can manage a high volume of transactions at the same time.”
Bluebell is very impressed with Rackspace’s level of support for its e-commerce deployment. “While we had a lot to take care of in terms of design and content development for each brand’s online shop, Rackspace’s support freed us from worries about the technical aspects of these websites. Following the deployment, Rackspace continues to provide technical expertise and immediate support whenever we have an issue. Its Fanatical Support is really exemplary for the service industry,” said Ardisson.
To date, Bluebell has deployed the Magento eCommerce platform for seven of its brands, with Carven Japan being the first brand to launch its e-commerce website under this platform in August 2012. The result has been very positive.
“Opening the online shop has enabled Carven to follow the global e-commerce trends of luxury brands to go online in Japan. Since the website was launched the number of visits and sales generated via the website has far exceeded our initial expectation,” Ardisson said.
WHAT’S NEXT?
Bluebell plans to expand its e-commerce in many locations under the Magento platform. The retailer plans to open more online shops for Japan, China and the European market within 2013. “The online shopping market for luxury goods is growing fast in Asia, and our e-commerce platform will serve as an effective sales channel that enables us to capture the opportunities and stay competitive in this market,” said Ardisson.
Bluebell intends to rely on Rackspace’s dedicated hosting in more locations as it expands its e-commerce operations in Asia and Europe.
“In addition to being extremely reliable, Rackspace has also been very responsive to our requests and resourceful in giving us advice about the technological requirements of our e-commerce business. We believe that the continued support from Rackspace will propel us to success as we expand our online shops in different markets,” Ardisson concluded.
“We can’t thank our Magento deployment partner Bluecom enough for having recommended Rackspace to us.”.
