Trimtex is breaking records with Shopify Plus

Offering hundreds and hundreds of individual store-in-store webshops within your digital flagship store: is that even possible in Shopify? The answer is a resounding yes. Code came up with a solution that enabled Norwegian sports-brand Trimtex to leave Salesforce Commerce Cloud for Shopify plus, and regain control over their IT.

CLIENT

Trimtex

INDUSTRY

Fashion

TECHNOLOGY

Shopify plus webshops

PACKAGE

Webshop migration

Services we provided

Replatforming

Store building

UX/UI Design

Email Marketing

The B2B challenge: enabling custom team-stores in Shopify

Trimtex is an established Norwegian brand selling clothing for outdoor sports like running, cycling, cross-country skiing, triathlon and orienteering. As part of their services they offer sports teams, clubs and companies a platform to open their own, temporary webshop with customized Trimtex products, where team members can order fully custom-designed clothing. Trimtex has about 50 of these stores running in any given week, featuring many different solutions within them, and most of them available for a few weeks only.

All of this used to take place on their previous website, running on Salesforce Commerce Cloud in combination with Netsuite as an ERP. When their contract with Salesforce was about to end, however, Trimtex started looking for alternatives.

Sarah Nilsen-Sparks, Head of E-commerce and Digital Marketing, recalls: “Salesforce was too big, too costly, and even though we had pretty good IT people in house, we were quite restricted as to what we could do ourselves. We explored everything, Magento, custom, WordPress, and our conclusion was to either stay with Salesforce or move to Shopify - provided we could find an agency capable of building what we needed in Shopify.”

→ Also looking to migrate your brand to Shopify? Check out these blogs

Why Code won the project

Enter Code, and our Solutions Architect Pier Segaar in particular. At Code, every potential project goes through a preliminary risk assessment phase for a feasibility check: what does the client need exactly, can it be done in Shopify, and can we guarantee the required result? With Trimtex, this was even more crucial than usual. Sarah: “We needed to know if Shopify could handle the complexity of our particular set-up, of course. If not, that was a dealbreaker. Pier hit it off with our Senior IT Consultant, asked the right questions and quickly figured out by presenting a Proof of Concept: This is how you’d do it in Shopify.”

Another factor in Trimtex’ choice was Sarah’s wish to avoid a fullservice agency. “They often feel like a Chinese restaurant that put some Italian dishes on their menu. It’s usually clear to see where they are lacking. Since we were also looking for a new design agency and a digital marketing agency, we were interested in finding parties that worked well together with our Shopify agency.”

She found the ideal combination in Code, Code’s go-to design partner Bolden, and Utrecht-based digital marketing agency Elevate Digital. “The fast and easy interaction between the three is fantastic, a delightful part of the process. It was also a good fit for us culturally: Dutch and Nordic people have similar levels of English and a similar sense of humor. There is a nice rapport and connection that makes it enjoyable to work with one another.”

Giant project: B2B & D2C stores + a new brand

Since the migration was a pretty big undertaking, Code and Trimtex completed it in several phases. We started with the ‘easy bit’: the B2C storefronts for Norway, for Sweden and for international customers, with Bolden taking care of the store design.

Then we turned to the B2B commerce project of launching the custom team-stores. To overhaul all the existing tech and features from Salesforce to Shopify was quite the challenge, so we agreed on an intermediary stage where ‘B2B’ customers could see products but not yet order them by launching three non-transactional Shopify storefronts, for Norway, Sweden and the rest of the world.

An ambitious side-project: Surpas

In October 2022, with the project in full swing, Trimtex asked Code to add an extra project: the launch of a new high-end brand specializing in triathlon gear. With Bolden collaborating on the name, logo and branding, Code was able to deliver the Surpas store by February 2023, while keeping the bigger project on track as planned.

The ultimate Shopify B2B challenge: shoppable team-stores

Finally, we were ready to tackle the tech behind the custom team-stores and turn the B2B site into a platform for hundreds of fully transactional stores. This involved not only integrating Shopify with the Netsuite PIM Trimtex uses, but also getting the customer journey right from the moment visitors enter the homescreen - the portal to the B2C, the B2B and the new brand Surpas. The team worked on a tight deadline, too, with the custom team-stores going live in September 2023.

Of course Code is always up for a nice challenge, especially when it involves doing new and exciting stuff. Lead Frontend Developer Melvin recalls it was a pretty complex job, with a lot of ‘edge cases’ to consider: “Which customer has access to which team-stores, who can see prices and who can’t, what screens do we take the various customers through - many of it we couldn’t really foresee so we designed the edge cases on the go, using the styleguide Bolden handed us for the B2C store. It took 7 sprints, all in all. I really enjoyed it, it was something different, we never did something like this before.” Frontend Developer Sónia adds: “It was a learning experience, for sure! It goes to show that even though a platform seems to be made for one thing, there is plenty of room to break the rules. It helped that the people at Trimtex were quite flexible, too, they were open to our suggestions.”

→ Interested in reading other client cases where Code pushed the borders of Shopify? Check out Check out all our case studies here

Working with Code

Throughout the project, Sarah was happy with our Coders as well. “Melvin and Sónia in particular were great to work with. They think outside the box and really involve themselves on the client side, focusing on what it’s used for. We really enjoyed this attitude, it speeded up things.”

Sarah was also impressed by Code’s partner network. As an official Shopify Plus partner and Master Elite Klaviyo partner, we have very short lines with both. Sarah: “The direct relationship Code has with Shopify is very helpful. They know what is on Shopify’s roadmap and can easily escalate things to Shopify. The same with Klaviyo, which we also started using: Code reports our particular issues to Klaviyo and can tell us when Klaviyo is going to work on it.”

Future plans

What is on Trimtex’ own roadmap, now that the migration is completed? Sarah’s first priority is localizing the international store. “Translation apps are just not good enough at the moment, I prefer paid translations from native speakers. Also because Trimtex’ audience often has its very own slang, particularly the triathletes.”

A good sizing tool is on her list as well: “We’re fully online and there is a no-return policy for the custom products, so we’re very interested in advancing our current solutions in that area.” She is also looking to give customers the option to further personalize their already custom designs, by adding their own name. “We plan to make this easier by making it more visual, so that customers can see how their name would look on the product ahead of ordering.” For the new brand Surpas she is considering to give customers the option to design their kit themselves, live on the screen, in addition to Trimtex’ professional design service. “At the moment customers work with an actual designer for this, it’s very bespoke.”

Some of these are already on the list for the evolution sprints Code has planned with Trimtex. We’ll keep you posted on developments!