Family fashion brand Joules has switched ecommerce platform as it looks towards expansion.
The move is part of the company’s strategy to increase the proportion of its sales coming from online, while also boosting its international presence.
Nick Wyld, head of IT at Joules, said: “We have spent five years building our online business and it now accounts for around 20% of our sales turnover. To increase functionality and expand internationally, while using our existing Microsoft ecommerce platform, our costs would grow too large, primarily as a result of hosting.
“We took a long-term strategic view – if we changed our platform now it would give us the scalability to support our growth plans and reduce our maintenance costs very quickly. We had to take into account not only our presence here in the UK but the online requirements of our franchisees, sales partners and distributors throughout the rest of the world.”
The company worked with the Javelin Group to implement a new hybris platform.
Andy Piscina, UK sales director at hybris, said: “Joules is a great example of a retailer which knows where it wants to go in terms of its online and multichannel strategy. With our help, the brand literally now has a platform from which to expand throughout the world.”
Joules was founded in 1994, starting life on the country show circuit. By 2005 the brand, led by Tom Joule, had a mail order and trade business.
