#009 : Insight __ how Kokatat delivers innovation with BigCommerce & Contentful

https://www.kokatat.com/

From their headquarters tucked away near the California Redwoods, Kokatat has been manufacturing revered paddle sports gear and apparel for nearly 50 years. They are world-renowned for the finest and driest paddling gear manufactured locally in Arcata, CA. With a “by paddlers, for paddlers” approach, they are dedicated to their customers - and trusted by them. In recent years, Kokatat had enjoyed strong growth in their online business, and the brand had seen great success in creating engaging content experiences using their team of athletes to create a formative online presence.

We've been working with Kokatat since 2016, supporting their digital commerce business. We launched their first eCommerce site using a leading technology stack that best supported their business needs at that time.

After some years, as the Kokatat digital business grew significantly, Overdose migrated Kokatat to BigCommerce Enterprise, with Contentful driving the content management and Overdose's proprietary integration platform Knect for their ERP connection. The website is now a content powerhouse. The site features an updated customer experience that includes a streamlined checkout process, creating a stronger mobile experience and an updated taxonomy based on customer behaviour.

Integrations

Overdose. integrated the BigCommerce site with Kokatat's custom ERP using our own proprietary software, Knect. The utilization of our "hub-and-bespoke" middleware connects BigCommerce and related systems within a single, customizable architecture, enabling a timely and accurate flow of product, order, fulfilment, and customer information that is always on 24/7 in the cloud.

CHALLENGE #001 : Technical Debt?

Reducing the TCO of the Kokatat tech stack. With constant security and performance updates, patching, and maintenance needed, much of Kokatat's web support budget was consumed by tasks that were not driving growth.

SOLUTION : Migration to a SaaS-based solution. This allowed Kokatat to explore platform options to further drive its industry leadership position. After further discovery, we collectively decided BigCommerce was the platform best-suited to their specific needs.

CHALLENGE #002 :?The Dry Suit: Custom Suit Configurator

Our job was to create an experience where customers could select colours and options, and view changes to their suit in real-time, letting them know how the finished product would appear. Additionally, sleeve length and inseam could be tailored for each custom suit, requiring the tool to accept custom measurements, recommend the appropriate size and any needed adjustments. With some of the suits having nearly 100 different configurable options and colours, we wanted to make sure that all options were shown to the customer before purchase.

SOLUTION : The custom suit configurator utilizes BigCommerce product modifiers and custom fields and the store-front API to allow customers to select multiple colours, options and sizes to make a suit uniquely theirs. All the data storage and price modifications are handled within BigCommerce to enable pricing and add-to-cart, and the configurator is built on custom templates within Stencil.

CHALLENGE #003 :?Bespoke Integration

Kokatat needed the ability to create seamless bespoke systems with a custom ERP for their eCommerce business.

SOLUTION : Knect helps Kokatat’s custom ERP system for orders, customers and inventory information. Knect provides the availability to backorder products at the variant level needed when size/colour options may be out of stock but not the entire product.

CHALLENGE #004 :?Contentful on BigCommerce

Improve and evolve the site to optimize performance, mobile experience, and security; complementing Kokatat's massive content infrastructure with their eCommerce platform that would seamlessly integrate story-telling with selling.

SOLUTION : The combination of Contentful and BigCommerce’s open templating would successfully achieve the design and customer experience required. Our approach was to capitalize on the ability to bring Contentful data into BigCommerce Stencil while using the native cart and checkout. The customer experience was centred on leveraging branded content to support their products, and visa-versa, using products to support branded content. Contentful powers the content aspects of the site, providing a robust and easy way to manage a high volume of information and then merchandise it with products. A "reverse- headless" approach was used, wherein BigCommerce drives the performance of the site and Contentful manages content. The ability for Overdose to bring Contentful data to BigCommerce Stencil without going fully headless was our solution to achieve the desired customer experience without the complexities of headless architecture.

UX/UI

We worked closely with the Kokatat team to undertake a consultative UX/UI design phase for the project. It began with creating an updated sitemap and wireframes to define the experience in a way that embraced mobile in a dedicated fashion and was based on learnings from the prior several years of work together. Following the UX exploration, we created a full set of mockups for both mobile and desktop to make sure the experience communicated the tenets of the Kokatat brand while also including key UX elements to make the site easily shoppable.

Overdose. & Chill

Matt Porter, Product Manager at Kokatat, joined us for Episode #059 of Overdose. & Chill to discuss continual innovation and expansion, the evolution of the commerce landscape, challenges and successes, and strategies for successful growth.

Read the original article here : Kokatat Case Study