Visions to relaunch Globetrotter.de on Magento

Hamburg and Hannover, 18 June 2009 - Globetrotter Ausrüstung Denart & Lechhart GmbH, Europe's leading retailer for outdoor and travel products, will undertake a complete relaunch of its existing online shop until February 2010. The project, which has been awarded to Visions, aims to provide a future-ready platform for the shop and further improve the user experience. In the course of the project, the existing shop – which is an in-house development – will be replaced with the Magento Enterprise Edition, a commercial open source e-commerce platform.

Globetrotter carefully evaluated the products available on the market, both closed and open source, as well as the possibility of developing a new in-house solution. Magento was chosen on the strength of its features and modern software architecture. In particular, the advanced multi-store functionality provided by Magento is of interested to Globetrotter. This not only makes it possible to consolidate the infrastructure of the Globetrotter and Jack Wolfskin Germany online shops, which is also operated by Globetrotter and was migrated to Magento earlier this year by Visions. In addition, it improves the retailer's strategic options by facilitating rapid internationalisation and the pursuit of nieche markets simply by adding stores to the existing system.

„Globetrotter.de has been a successful online shop since 1996“, explains Thieß Rathjen, Globetrotter's Head of E-Commerce. „The site is now undergoing a thorough refurbishment – the first since our last relaunch four years ago – so that it will be even more convenient for our customers to use. This is also the foundation of the exciting features we plan to roll out in the course of the coming year. Magento, with its modular architecture and extensibility, is the right platform for our future growth“.

Globetrotter will use the commercial Enterprise Edition to benefit from improved security features, patching policies and further functionality as well as manufacturer support. The Enterprise Edition also facilitates the control over deployment processes required by a shop of this scale.

Visions provides extensive consultancy and development services to support the project, and a shared development environment that facilitates collaboration between developers from the two firms. As part of the project, Visions provides training to in-house developers, helping the company to maintain and extend their system after the launch.

The shop will be hosted on a highly available cluster system provided by COLT Telecom, which will be optimised for Magento by Visions using the Magnitude Scalability extension. This technology already powers the speed and scalability side of Visions' own cluster system. Magnamics, Visions' data integration engine is also used to link the store with Globetrotter's new SAP system.

Globetrotter's online shop, available under Globetrotter.de, is amongst the most successful and largest in the German market. Its specialisation on outdoor and travel products, combined with excellent customer support and advice, has been rewarded with satisfied customers and numerous awards. In 2006, Globetrotter was named Distance Seller of the Year („Versender des Jahres“) and has since improved its success further. In the 2008/2009 business year, Globetrotter's revenue rose from 178 to 205 million Euros, of which 75 million were made through the e-commerce channel.

The new online store is due to launch in February 2010.

About Globetrotter

Live your dreams! Over the last 30 years, Globetrotter transformed from a small shop known only to insiders to Europe's largest outdoor retailer. Founded in 1979 by Klaus Denart and Peter Lechhart as a two-man business, the company today has over 1000 employees and revenue in excess of 200 million euro. Globetrotter's brick-and-mortar stores in Hamburg, Berlin, Dresden, Frankfurt, Cologne and Bonn offer a unique, award-winning adventure experience. The handbook, the foundation of our mail order business goes through more than 1 million printings each year and presents 25 000 articles on 729 pages. The online presence, available at www.globetrotter.de, is our largest shop, with more than 60 000 visitors daily, 50 000 customer reviews and close integration with our in-house IP-TV station, www.4-seasons.tv.

About Visions

Visions is an e-commerce consultancy with longstanding international experience, and has specialised in the Magento platform since January 2008. In addition to Magento Cluster Infrastructure, consultancy, training and workshops, Visions offers individual Magento solutions with integration to local ERP and financial systems. As a Magento Platinum partner, Visions has supported the further development of Magento since the first beta versions and successfully deployed Magento systems for leading online retailers.

Visions new media GmbH
Dragonerstraße 30
30163 Hannover
Germany

Phone: +49 (0)511 2155482
E-Mail: magento@visions.ag
Web: http://www.visions-new-media.com/de/

This release was published on openPR.