The Kappahl Group, a leading Nordic fashion company, partnered with Avensia to modernize and future-proof their digital commerce experience. The collaboration resulted in a faster e-commerce platform, a brand-new mobile app, and an advanced product information management (PIM) system. By leveraging Avensia's expertise in modern commerce, Kappahl successfully streamlined their operations, enabled more data-driven ways of working, and enhanced customer engagement across multiple markets and devices.

The challenge

Legacy Systems and Manual Processes

As a well-established fashion retailer in Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Poland, Kappahl recognized the need to modernize their digital presence. While in the process of replacing a legacy ERP system, the company was faced with significant challenges in adapting its outdated, on-premise e-commerce solution to align with the new infrastructure. A key priority was simplifying the product enrichment process while implementing flexible solutions that would enable the company to scale beyond customer expectations.

Kappahl’s main challenges included:

An outdated on-premise e-commerce solution that couldn’t support Kappahl’s rapid growth ambition.
Performance and site speed issues.
Time-consuming manual processes for merchandising, campaign management and product data enrichment.
Limited search, filtering, and product recommendation capabilities affecting the overall customer experience negatively.
No PIM solution in place, making both product data enrichment processes and site navigation inefficient.
Legacy codebase slowing down the development of new features, such as adding new delivery and payment methods.

The objective

A Scalable and Future-Proof Commerce Solution

Kappahl wanted to future-proof its e-commerce solution, ensuring scalability while offering customers a seamless omnichannel experience. However, it became clear early on that the existing platform would have a hard time meeting the company’s new goals which included:

Improving site speed and overall performance.
Increasing conversion rates and sales.
Enhancing user experience (UX) throughout the customer journey.
Refining critical customer touchpoints such as site search, product recommendations, and the checkout process.
Increasing organic site traffic and visitor engagement.
Enhancing scalability to enable rapid implementation of new features and easier expansion into new markets.

To achieve these goals, Kappahl needed a modern, flexible commerce solution that could support innovation and sustained business growth.

The solution

A Unified Platform for Smarter Management

To support Kappahl’s vision, Avensia delivered a packaged e-commerce solution covering all aspects of their digital sales operations and ensuring a smooth transition to the cloud. Kappahl selected Avensia Nitro, a proven commerce accelerator built on Optimizely, with pre-built connectors to critical support systems such as Inriver PIM and Voyado Elevate.

Avensia Nitro’s status as a pre-packaged solution with extensive ready-to-use functionality was crucial for Kappahl, as they needed to launch their new e-commerce site ahead of their ERP system rollout. Deadlines were tight and the combined Kappahl-Avensia team had to make some tough prioritizations to reach the finish line in time.

Boosting the Omnichannel Experience with a New Mobile App

As part of the new commerce platform, Avensia also helped develop a brand-new hybrid mobile app for Kappahl, acting as a key tool for fostering strong, long-term customer relationships.

Because the mobile app is built on the same platform as the e-commerce site, customers enjoy a seamless, consistent brand experience while Kappahl benefits from internal process efficiencies. Native elements were selectively integrated into the app where they provided the most value, such as search functionality, bottom navigation (HUD), and a QR/barcode scanner.

Our mobile app is a key driver of customer engagement and long-term loyalty, allowing us to communicate directly with our members through app push notifications. It also enhances the customer experience by leveraging mobile-specific capabilities, such as camera access for in-store product scanning, creating a more seamless and interactive omni-channel journey.

Implementing a PIM System Supporting Two Brands

A key challenge for Kappahl was product data management. Previously, Kappahl had no dedicated product information management (PIM) system in place, making enrichment and updates of product data extremely time-consuming.

To address this, Avensia implemented a new PIM system from inriver, allowing Kappahl to centralize product data, streamline data management processes as well as improve navigation and product filtering for customers on the site. The PIM solution also supports Newbie, Kappahl Groups lifestyle brand for little ones, that has its own unique website. This allows both brands to run efficiently on a single multisite platform across different markets.

Unlocking omnichannel personalization

Kappahl was already using Voyado Engage as their CRM, but they wanted to take customer engagement and personalization to the next level. To further enhance the whole digital shopping experience, Avensia implemented Voyado Elevate 4, which not only removed manual handling of merchandising internally but also added automated product recommendations and improved search and navigation online.

The synergies between Voyado Engage and Elevate also unlocked new opportunities for omnichannel personalization across multiple customer touchpoints.

The results

A Stronger, Faster Digital Experience

Since launching the new digital commerce ecosystem, Kappahl can now offer a seamless omnichannel experience to their customers. Significant improvements can be seen across multiple areas including:

Higher conversion rates, uplift in average order value and increased overall sales volumes.
Improved site performance with significantly faster load times.
More relevant product recommendations and higher customer engagement.
Increased number of returning customers and more engagement with product pages further down the funnel.
Enhanced internal efficiency, reducing manual work in product data management, merchandising and campaign management.
Improved possibilities to localize and personalize content for enhanced customer experiences.
Enabled scalability, making it easier to add new sites (such as newbie.com), markets, features, payment solutions and delivery options

Continuous Work

Data-Driven Development to Optimize Customer Experience

Through close collaboration and a shared vision, Kappahl and Avensia have built a future-proof digital commerce ecosystem that not only meets today’s customer expectations but is also set to evolve with the industry. With a strong digital foundation in place, Kappahl is now positioned to expand into new markets with ease, introduce new features and improvements faster, further personalize customer experiences and continue perfecting performance and efficiency.

Beyond the initial implementation, Avensia continues to support and refine Kappahl’s digital commerce ecosystem, ensuring the platform evolves with new trends and customer expectations. Together, Avensia and Kappahl apply an analytical mindset combined with advanced tools, such as Contentsquare, to gather customer experience insights to support data-driven decisions. Everything the Kappahl team does, why they do it and how they evaluate it, is well grounded in data.

Dressed for Success: Kappahl’s New Customer-Centric Commerce Platform

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