With the opportunity to upgrade its technology and replace its ecommerce platform to drive new growth in a cost-effective and timely way, leading specialty retailer of women’s apparel Coldwater Creek leveraged a replatform as a catalyst for a complete digital transformation. Coldwater Creek’s digital vision was brought to life with a flexible, modern architecture built on BigCommerce, a best-in-class seamless customer experience with improved omni-channel touchpoints, efficient merchandising and management of the site, an impressive total cost of ownership, and an ecosystem designed for growth both globally and in new channels.
Coldwater Creek selected CQL, an elite BigCommerce partner, to navigate their transformative journey and implement the modernized tech stack through a multi-stage process, including a comprehensive platform evaluation and recommendation, strategic discovery meetings, a robust persona exercise, a brand refresh, product information management (PIM) system implementation, development, custom integrations, and SEO.
Coldwater Creek’s new website delivers an elevated brand look with a heightened customer experience, engaging customers with nature-inspired palettes, intuitive navigation filled with captivating collections and immersive storytelling, and visual badges and promotions to enrich the shopping experience. With an ecommerce infrastructure designed for agility and flexibility, Coldwater Creek is outfitted to scale operations and grow their market share.
Site
migration
Salesforce Commerce Cloud to BigCommerce
RESULTS
8.5% Revenue Increase
8.5% Order Increase
20% Cost Savings
Technology
Coldwater Creek was founded in 1984 and inspired by the splendor of the great northwest. A leading specialty retailer of women’s apparel, Coldwater Creek sets itself apart by its design, rich with unexpected details while embracing simplicity, artistry and the beauty of nature.
Coldwater Creek sought to upgrade its technology and replace its ecommerce platform to continue to drive new growth. A new tech stack was needed to provide new technological capabilities and features, improve financial performance, and facilitate growth & expansion.
Coldwater Creek leveraged a replatform to BigCommerce to transform their entire digital ecosystem. The modernized infrastructure drives brand expansion, delivers a leading-edge customer experience, and provides internal teams with new tools to scale operations and grow revenue.
CWC engaged with CQL in a robust persona exercise to refresh the target customer profiles on ColdwaterCreek.com. Understanding personas keeps customers at the center of the design and user experience process, identifying key features and functionalities, anticipating areas customers will need support, crafting messages related to different users types, and personalizing marketing to the target audience.
Coldwater Creek sets itself apart by its design, rich with unexpected details while embracing simplicity, artistry and the beauty of nature. Based on the new personas, CQL used brand boards to explore design elements that would inspire the new site design. The new boards presented a variety of creative directions with an updated color palette and flexibility for seasonality and collection curation.
Coldwater Creek redesigned their website using a new navigational experience, filled with visual collections and page templates that inspire new ways to create a look. With pages including new content sections like “why we love it” and “pieces to pair with” as well as brand stories, collection and product stories, and seasonal outfitting; customers are invited into the site with engaging, inspirational, and fresh content that encourages browsing and exploration.
During the platform evaluation, CQL evaluated 5 commerce solutions against a set of common criteria including strategic fit, platform requirements, implementation plan, and total cost of ownership.
BigCommerce was selected as the platform of choice. With a platform roadmap focused on enterprise-grade enhancements such as multi-storefront management, an enterprise-level discount and promotion engine, and B2B functionality, BigCommerce offers flexibility and extendability with their headless option and proved an affordable alternative for enterprise brands with business complexity including large product variants and checkout customizations. BigCommerce also provides an open, flexible partner ecosystem, allowing Coldwater Creek to easily integrate with third-party partners.
Coldwater Creek launched their new ecosystem in time for the 2023 holiday season. Their digital transformation on BigCommerce not only saved the brand 20% in total cost of ownership, but achieved stellar growth in revenue and orders.
Coldwater Creek’s digital transformation created an opportunity to not only migrate to a new ecommerce platform, but also update legacy tools with new partners and third party tools. During discovery, CQL & Coldwater Creek designed a new Technology Ecosystem Map, documenting the various touchpoints of the BigCommerce workflow.
Coldwater Creek added a new PIM, as well as over 22 third party integrations. The modern tech stack delivers an engaging customer experience; a consolidated ecosystem to market, merchandise, and service customers efficiently; and new features to grow loyalty and engagement.
“Coldwater Creek’s growth plan required a significant upgrade to our ecommerce capabilities. Replatforming to BigCommerce with CQL gives us a modernized infrastructure to drive brand expansion, deliver an engaging customer experience and provide us with tools to scale operations and grow revenue.”
DAVE WALDE
CEO
COLDWATER CREEK
