Calibre Menswear
Renowned as a leading Australian menswear brand, Calibre has been a trailblazer in the country’s fashion landscape for over 30 years. Founded in 1989 by Gary Zecevic, Calibre remains dedicated to crafting premium menswear that exemplifies inventive classicism and timeless style.
Gary Zecevic's unwavering focus on product quality and design integrity underscores Calibre's ethos, ensuring that the brand's reputation speaks for itself, independent of any personal acclaim.
Technology
Mission
As trailblazers in Australian men’s fashion, Calibre Menswear is well positioned to redefine the online menswear shopping experience. Having forged a strong partnership with Bedford Lane, Calibre decided to invest in a comprehensive design overhaul and custom theme build, to create an unparalleled digital customer experience. The primary goal of this strategic transformation was to elevate the Calibre brand, whilst enhancing engagement with their discerning clientele, solidifying their position as a powerhouse in menswear.
Challenge
When we embarked on this project with Calibre, our goal was straightforward: to craft an unparalleled menswear eCommerce experience that truly set Calibre apart from the competition. To achieve this, every stage of the process needed to be purposeful to ensure a successful project delivery. From the initial discovery and design stages to the final theme build, the transformation demanded meticulous attention to detail to ensure the final product not only exceeded client expectations but also set new benchmarks for best-in-category performance.
Solution
This project began with extensive UX workshops to identify and address existing buyer friction points. Starting with this in depth analysis enabled our team to be purposeful in the documentation of key features whilst also adhering to the need for an incredibly seamless shopping experience.
The design of Calibre's new storefront was both iterative and collaborative in nature. This was pivotal in our ability to capture the headline website brief, which read “Create a best-in-class menswear eCommerce experience that stays true to our brand”. The design is “considered minimal”, where everything has its place and performs a desired function that adds to the elevated shopping experience.
On the development front, we transitioned from a complex headless architecture to native Shopify, enhancing agility and performance. The new backend supports incredibly fast page loads, versatile "Shop the Look" functionality, and a master utility section for easy content management. The tech stack, including Okendo, Searchspring, and Elevar, integrates seamlessly to support efficient day to day operations.
Additionally, as part of this build was a complete checkout upgrade leveraging Shopify checkout extensibility. The upgrades included migration or existing checkout functionality and complex integration with the brands ERP - Apparel 21. Key upgrades included Shopify checkout functions, custom gift card redemption as well as bespoke discount functionality.
Outcomes
The improvements made to Calibre's storefront and backend systems have proven to be extremely effective. Enhancements in design have elevated the brands online presence and refined the customer journey and shopping experience. We've added new revenue opportunities with new features, including “Shop the Look” with and strengthened omni-channel capabilities with custom gift card and discount functionality that seamlessly integrates with Apparel 21.
On top of the substantial checkout upgrade, we've delivered a lightning fast website, improving page load across the board from the mid 30’s to 90’s. We are thrilled with the results and extremely satisfied that in partnership with Calibre we've delivered what we set out to achieve - “a category killer website”.
