K-Way is a renowned French brand founded in 1965 that had been sunsetted after a bright past It was relaunched and turned into a highly profitable company by the Italian group BasicNet in 2004. Leveraging a unique licensing model, BasicNet has met up the challenge of successfully reinvigorating K-Way, making the iconic raincoat brand their current star performer.
Since migrating to Shopify Plus, BasicNet has experienced an impressive growth trajectory:
Seamless integration of 200+ stores’ websites and inventory in real-time.
Double-digit growth in website visits, with K-Way witnessing a growth of over 40% of retained visitors.
Streamlined operations leading to efficient global marketing, design, and IT practices.
Challenge
Managing a multitude of brands across diverse markets, the BasicNet team needed a comprehensive yet flexible system to streamline its online operations.Their in-house built e-commerce platform, while historically efficient, was beginning to show its limitations.
“We used to have a built-in e-commerce system, but we realized we were investing too much effort in building things that could be built perfectly by someone else,”says Nicolò Ammendola, Head of e-Commerce at BasicNet.
One of their specific challenges was the need to scale their licensing business model internationally. They required an ecosystem platform that would seamlessly cater to their marketplace model, connecting distributors and licensees, and facilitating smooth fee collection.
This combination of factors urged K-Way to look for a solution that would provide an efficient, flexible, and scalable e-commerce platform for their evolving business needs.
Solution
Shifting to Shopify was a strategic decision that allowed BasicNet to simplify and manage their growing international e-commerce operations. The platform's flexibility was key, as well as its ability to offer an OS-like environment where a multitude of tools could be integrated.
Shopify provides a platform that is extensible and works as the foundation layer of an ecosystem.
Shopify's applications also greatly facilitated K-Way's operations. They leveraged the Boost AI Search & Discovery app to enhance the site navigation and browsing experience, which resulted in a 10% increase of the average session duration and boosted the average page navigated per session by 6%. K-way also utilized integrations such as Channable for marketplace operations, Gorgias for customer service, Klaviyo for email marketing, and Aftership for delivery and return management. Localization was handled via the Shopify Translate and Adapt app, making the brand's transition into new markets even smoother.
Shopify greatly boosted K-Way’s internationalization, making it easier for the brand to expand into new markets: “We are using Shopify to create mirror versions of our main Kway.com website, specifically tailored for our new licensees in the UK and Hong Kong. By duplicating our website, we create a 'plug-and-play' platform that our licensees can administer and operate effortlessly, which enables our licensees to start selling in no time,” explains Nicolò Ammendola.
Results
The transition to Shopify unlocked impressive results for K-Way, validating BasicNet’s decision to migrate to a state-of-the-art e-commerce platform. Their key performance indicators reflected the success of the migration.
The K-Way website saw a remarkable 40% increase in its number of visitors, a testament to the effectiveness of the strategies employed and the power of Shopify's platform.
The increased number of connected stores – from an initial 30-40 to an impressive 200 in real-time – expanded BasicNet’s reach and also strengthened its various brands’ presence across markets thanks to easily localized versions of the website. This boost in operational capacity was made possible due to Shopify's ability to provide a real-time inventory of 200+ stores across countries.
Shopify, without a doubt, is the best e-commerce solution out there for someone in our position. Our ambition is to implement our streamlined process on Shopify across all our brands sites globally, in the next three years.
