We're interviewing some of the most influential people in the digital retail space to bring you some of the hottest insights and learn what's next for the future of customer experience in retail. 

This week we spoke with Christian Reppien Trovatten. Christian is the Team Leader of E-Commerce Operations at Outfit International, and an expert in eCommerce with 20 years of experience. Outfit International is Europe's leading quality hunting gear store retailer and was founded in 1976.

You can view the full collection of our Top Voices in Retail interview series here.

Sharing image Christian Reppien Trovatten Outfit International

Hi Christian, can you please tell us a bit about your background and your area of responsibility at Outfit International? 

I'm an e-commerce specialist with approximately 20 years experience. I started out in 2004 with one of the first healthcare e-commerce stores in Denmark and I've been working with e-commerce ever since. For the past 5 years I've been working with Outfit International, working both on the B2C & B2B part of the organization. The team I work with is often brought together with an accumulative mixture of skills and specialties, depending on the specific task that we are trying to achieve. I form that team and drive the project.

Outfit International is a successful retail hunting brand. Can you tell us more about the company and the business model?

We are a Danish-based company and have been producing quality hunting gear since 1976. Our two brands, Seeland and Härkila, are leading hunting brands in their category and price range across Europe, both designed with experience, passion and expertise in mind. Our brands retail via partners and we also sell via our own e-commerce. We have approximately 100 employees. 

How would you describe your typical customer and their expectations of your digital experience?

Customers of our Härkila brand are typically experienced hunters looking for high-level, high-quality, technical hunting equipment. The Seeland brand is less technical and priced at a lower price point. We also offer clothing for outdoor etc. in this brand.

Our customers expect the level of product information on our website to be second to none. Being a Hunter is a lifestyle and our customers are really well-versed in their area of expertise. We can't simply rely on our partners to provide that level of information on their landing pages for our products.

Our retailers may typically only display a few images or one line of text as standard. For us, as brand owners, we have to ensure we deliver as much content to them as possible. It's extremely important to us that our product descriptions are understandable, down-to-earth, and contain the technical information expected from the consumer.

An equally important aspect of the digital experience is convenience and simple user experience.

What digital experiences have you implemented to meet their expectations?

We have launched a new E-commerce site for both of our brands. Here we have used Occtoo's Experience Data Platform to categorize the data and content assets to display it in a way that is meaningful and relevant for customers, e.g. according to the type of hunt they are doing. The data from the PIM- and ERP system automatically gets pushed through Occtoo and it creates a beautiful and fast real-time experience on the site. This has really enhanced the customer experience, especially on our product pages. When the consumer scrolls down they see products in the same category. The PDP (product detail page) also feeds into our partner content and becomes a destination where customers can get to know the product in-depth, and they may purchase on our own page or at retail partners. It's quite a complex product page setup, but we can control the narrative now through the smart logic and automation we put behind the data and content assets.

Additionally, we have added a store finder to help our consumers easily locate their nearest store retailer.

Learn more: Read about how Outfit International new website experiences for their brands Härkila and Seeland

You transformed your entire stack into a Composable approach in a big bang, what was the reasoning behind this? 

Our PIM system from InRiver stopped supporting the on-premise solution that we had, which forced us to go cloud-based with our PIM. At the same time we decided to upgrade our ERP to Business Central resulting in all core systems being Cloud-based. This led to an internal discussion about what to do next. We wanted to build our tech stack with best-of-breed technology and be digitally agile - and a Composable setup helped us do this.

What tools do your Composable stack consist of?

We will soon be launching an upgrade to Business Central. Our tech stack is now built with:

  • Occtoo’s Experience Data Platform to connect all content assets and data
  • Azure for storage
  • Cumulus as a DAM
  • Sanity as our CMS
  • Centra as our E-commerce platform
  • ActiveCampaign for email automation
  • EasyCom for return automation
  • Clerk.io for personalisation and search
  • Rule for transactional email automation

What results have you seen so far?

Previously our typical time-to-market to update text or an image could take 2-to-3 days. Now we are so much more agile. Every department that owns product information can now make the changes they need within minutes and we trust our systems to make the update automatically in all relevant areas, including directly on our e-commerce.

We are no longer relying on one person in IT or heavy developer resource. This free's up more time and resource for us to focus on improving the customer experience.

We hired NoA Ignite as our partner on the new E-commerce and they had some amazing ideas. Overall we have noticed an immediate and significant increase in website sessions, conversion rates and sales. Internally our tech stack is more agile and future-proof.

How long time did the project take and what challenges did you face?

The project took a total of 8 months. We are quite a small IT and Operations team. A success and a challenge was being able to find the right partners because we do as little as possible in-house, so we are reliant on our partners.

I can't think of a negative aspect at all of this project, because we have some extremely good partners in NoA ignite. The team at Occtoo has been very supportive and helpful during this big transition.

If you were to give one piece of advice for someone going Composable, what would that be? 

Rip off the Band-aid and do everything at once. If you have the capacity and the manpower, do it! Go all in. It forces the whole company to think differently and know their responsibility. You have to do your research of course and make sure you can handle a project of that size. 

Read more about Outfit International's new E-commerce 

Follow Christian on LinkedIn

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