Demandware for Columbia Sportswear

20 May '09

3 min read

Demandware, the leading on-demand ecommerce solutions provider, announced that Columbia Sportswear Company, a global leader in the active outdoor apparel and footwear industries, has selected the Demandware eCommerce Platform as the foundation upon which to build its new business-to-consumer online channel.

From its founding in 1938 as a small family-owned hat distributor, Columbia Sportswear has grown to be one of the world's largest outerwear brands with annual sales in excess of $1.3 billion. Columbia offers an extensive product line that includes a wide variety of outerwear, sportswear, rugged footwear and accessories sold in more than 100 countries. Columbia.com is expected to launch on the Demandware eCommerce Platform in the summer of 2009, serving consumers in the United States, with other sites to follow to serve consumers in Europe and Canada.

Columbia's ecommerce sites will convey the extensive breadth of the brand while showcasing “The Science of the Greater Outdoors” and how the company's advanced product technologies protect consumers from the elements and enable people to enjoy the outdoors year-round. Columbia intends to create unique user experiences for its customers, incorporating contextual product content and rich media into their sites. In addition, Columbia will integrate ecommerce kiosks into several bricks-and-mortar branded retail stores that it plans to open in key metropolitan markets to greatly expand the product selection and inventory available in the stores.

“Demandware provides a full-featured, proven ecommerce platform that gives us the ability to own our brand online, along with all the benefits of its on-demand model – essentially the best of both worlds,” said Kerry Barnes, Columbia's Vice President of Retail. “Among the platform providers we evaluated, Demandware also has the most experience in international ecommerce, making them the ideal partner to support our future plans for global expansion.”

Columbia selected Demandware because it provides:
• The capabilities of an enterprise-class ecommerce platform, without the need to invest in and maintain costly Web hosting infrastructure
• Full in-house control over merchandising promotions, catalog, pricing and all other aspects of the online shopping experience
• The ability to develop multiple sites quickly from a common architecture
• Seamless, automatic upgrades to continually leverage new merchandising functionality and enable ecommerce best practices
• Guaranteed site performance and security
• Support for multiple languages, currencies and payment types
• Extensive expertise launching ecommerce sites internationally

“The Columbia brand is known for continuous innovation and superior quality and value, and we are delighted and honored to have been selected as their ecommerce provider. With Demandware, Columbia has a best-in-class platform for building exceptional ecommerce sites without the IT infrastructure burden of an in-house application,” said Stephan Schambach, Founder and Executive Chairman of Demandware.

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