At the same time as the dotcom bubble burst and scores of IT companies went bankrupt, an enthusiastic 16-year-old developer, Stefan Hamann, set up an IT company out of his childhood home: Hamann-Media GmbH.
Shortly afterwards he brought his brother Sebastian on board, who, as a designer, gave the company style, creativity and a striking design. This perfect symbiosis of technology and design formed the basis for Shopware’s rapid development.
Fast forward to today and we speak to Wiljo Krechting of Shopware find out more about CLEW, a company manufacturing a revolutionary snowboard binding that needed a revolutionary website to retail them from. Shopware 6 has future proofed their business with international localisation to ensure they can sell worldwide.
What makes Shopware 6 special?
Shopware 6 is built on an entirely new technical platform with an the API First approach and has been developed from scratch allowing the implementation of any conceivable form of ecommerce website. It offers the flexibility for retail to take place where people are; independent of place, time and end device.
Using the API, individual components – e.g. the storefront/administration, or even third-party solutions like ERP, PIM or CRM – can be connected within one centralised and integrated system. This means every retailer has the same opportunity to quickly react to market changes and create engaging cross-channel customer experiences. The overarching goal: to make your brand more present in people’s everyday lives and thus unleash new growth potential.
CLEW – The snowboard bindings with a pull
For three friends from Munich, snowboarding is as much part of winter as snow on the mountains.
Their idea for a start-up came in 2017 from their passion for the outdoor sport. They were always coming up against the significant disadvantages of conventional snowboard bindings: Namely, the constant fastening and unfastening of the bindings, in particular, which is a major disruption for passionate snowboarders.
The founders started to research ideas and finally, in May 2017: the concept of the two-part snowboard fastening was born. The initial prototype emerged in the 3D-print process.
The patented fastening mechanism saves snowboarders considerable time with buckling and unbuckling. Thanks to the step-in function, the customer only needs to pull on one ergonomic pulley handle to release the foot section and step directly out of the binding.
After the founders received a grant that allowed them to dedicate themselves to the project for a whole year, they made their debut at the ISPO trade fair in Munich early in 2019.
Ultimately, they founded CLEW GmbH in March 2019 with the clear mission of bringing the product to market this winter and making snowboards more attractive and convenient for others.
CLEW is the first Shopware 6 customer
Since summer, preparations have been underway to start up production. That meant it was also time to consider the first sales channels. The need for an online shop quickly became clear.
Even before starting the project, the founders had been in contact with the Shopware Enterprise Agency dasistweb in Munich. Together with the agency, they quickly decided to start the project with Shopware 6.
The new e-commerce solution released by Shopware in July 2019 was available in an Early Access version that offered the optimal basis for CLEW to operate its online business.
Shopware 6 uses the latest technologies based on the API-first approach and offers many out-of-the-box functions so that a short time-to-market is guaranteed. dasistweb only needed an implementation time of six weeks for launching the project with Shopware.
Initial products and a clean design
The shop has four different product versions in one main category. As a special feature, the shop implements payment types that can be selected depending on the product. There is a limited pre-rider edition of the CLEW binding in the shop that came out in December 2019 (immediate sales). The three other products can be currently pre-ordered, but will only be shipped starting in October 2020 (purchase on account).
The shop comes across with a clean and emotional design created using the new Shopware experience worlds. Setting up experience worlds is intuitively simple and does not require any design affinity or previous technical knowledge.
In addition, an interface with the ERP system Odoo was created for CLEW’s Shopware 6 shop. The ERP system is used for processing orders.
CLEW uses Mailchimp for its email marketing.
Do you want to future proof your website?
Visit shopware.com to learn more about how our software can grow your business! Shopware would be more than happy to speak with you personally about your online goals and project requirements.
