Hering updates its tech stack by replatforming to VTEX

Challenge

Cia. Hering is a major Brazilian fashion group, with 805 self-owned and franchise physical stores employing over 5,300 employees company-wide. Currently, the company operates stores in Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Venezuela and also exports its products worldwide. Last year, the business achieved BRL 1.8 billion in gross revenue. 

The group was conscious of the impacts of migrating all six of its brands to a new ecommerce platform at once, so in 2021, they decided to migrate just two: DZARM and the Hering outlet. These first two would pave the way to migrate the other four brands: Hering, Hering Kids, Hering Sports, and Hering Intimates.

This process was supported by VTEX’s Professional Services team, who was keen on delivering the fastest time to market possible to not interfere with the user experience during the replatforming process. After a detailed assessment of their customer experience and the elements they wanted to improve, the company decided to migrate the main brand, Hering, from SAP Hybris to VTEX first.

The decision centered around solving their former platform’s lack of customization on the frontend and giving the business more autonomy to roll out and test new ideas. Hering needed a solution that facilitated the technical management of the website, with a user-friendly interface and easy to maintain, to unlock profitable growth.

“The main factors that led us to choose VTEX were the platform’s flexibility and pre-built functionalities. We wanted to put many ideas into practice quickly. Our business is selling clothes, and we would rather not have a huge team of developers to do all that.”

João Evangelista, Digital general manager at Cia. Hering

Solution

The great differentiator for this replatforming process was having a strong relationship with Hering’s digital team. The VTEX Professional Services team worked closely with them over 12 weeks to ensure every challenge was met with the right solution. This partnership resulted in a three-month migration process and 100% of traffic being flipped over to the VTEX storefront in only ten days.

The company’s previous legacy platform provided ​​a single-tenant, private-cloud-managed service with high implementation costs and a heavy need for configuration, which caused inconsistencies in the customer experience and made testing innovations way harder, but with VTEX’s flexibility and scalability, the possibilities became endless for Cia. Hering. With a multi-tenant platform, the group tapped into VTEX’s ecosystem of partners, first and third-party apps, and other integrations.

• Fully customizable storefront. Being a fashion apparel company, Cia. Hering has specific needs related to the super-dynamic fashion industry. 

  Before, the group’s team had to wait for days to change a simple banner and could not upload videos and GIF banners. With VTEX IO’s Site Editor (CMS) and frontend technology, Cia. Hering’s sales team has direct access to edit the storefront to meet their promotion, schedule, and campaign needs.

• Faster user experience. Most of their customers access the store website via Android devices. Being a cloud-native solution, VTEX shortened mobile page loading time, improving the shopping experience.
• All-in-one. All four Cia. Hering’s brands are now hosted on one VTEX-powered domain (https://www.hering.com.br/) with four different storefronts. Users can easily navigate between the stores and find the desired products.
• Improved checkout experience. By studying customer behavior, Cia. Hering noticed that abandoned carts were one of the major challenges in their previous environment. With VTEX’s persistent cart feature, customers can now add the products they want, close their tabs, and return to the same cart on a different session or device. 

  Cia. Hering also implemented VTEX Smart Checkout, where customers can securely checkout quickly by just providing their email address and without having to log in each time.

• First-party apps and integrations. Cia. Hering built two custom apps and integrated them to VTEX to track consumer behavior and offer the best experience. They also use several VTEX Apps, like Facebook Business Extension, which opened the door to another sales channel.
• Franchise set-up. Cia. Hering has over 700 franchises in Brazil, and inventory integration and visibility are major challenges. With VTEX’s built-in OMS, they were able to integrate their franchise and owned physical stores with the digital channel for a smooth omnichannel and fulfillment operation.

Today, the 50 Hering-operated stores in the country also work as distribution centers. The plan is to gradually expand the capabilities to the entire store chain.

“Last year, we spent a lot of energy on technology. Today, we have a very well-rounded team. The peace of mind of having migrated to VTEX allows us to take on other fronts, to evolve because we know the site is running smoothly.”

João Evangelista, Digital general manager at Cia. Hering

Results

Cia. Hering’s results justify all the investments made in the solutions mentioned above. The company saw a 30% increase in average order value and a 40% decrease in abandoned carts thanks to VTEX’s omnichannel architecture, which expanded their product availability and a reduced stock-outs by integrating the physical stores.

After three months, the implementation was complete, and the website was running smoothly, with a 25% decrease in page load time and a page speed score of 97.

“We believe very much in the profitable digital growth model. We won’t grow at any cost. There is no such thing. I won’t finance growth within the group. We have to grow profitably. This is perhaps the biggest focus this year. There are many initiatives from all over the group, so we can guarantee that we have the best sales, the best positioning, the best price, and everything else.”

João Evangelista, Digital general manager at Cia. Hering

*DISCLAIMER: All information and numbers seen in the above text were provided and approved by Cia. Hering (VTEX's customer).