ghd builds online professional hair community. Powered by hybris.

Ghdhair.com Case Study
Since launching ten years ago, ghd has become
a brand synonymous with top-of-the-range hair
styling products. Widely used - and evangelised by hair stylists at the peak of their profession, the
ghd range is the choice of professionals and designed for salon use but easily adopted by women at
home. ghd’s revolutionary approach has generated
an exceptional following of loyal, and in many
cases, celebrity customers, and whilst sales
through salons and retail outlets are still strong,
online purchasing is steadily growing.
Until 2010 ghd relied on a transactional website which did little to
help promote the brand. It also proved expensive to maintain and
provided limited control over online sales. The company recognised
the need to build a central eCommerce solution that would support
its burgeoning international business and developed a digital
strategy with several key objectives.
The Challenge
The main aim was to match the iconic branding of the products with a
destination site that would compel hair stylists and consumers to make
regular visits. It had to be stylish, but equally to deliver all the necessary
functionality to ensure online commercial success. The ghd team wanted
to maintain control over the site, allowing them to implement powerful
merchandising and marketing features that would support digital sales. It
was also important that the eCommerce project should complement and
positively influence sales of ghd products ‘offline’ in salons and traditional
retail outlets.
Stuart Spiegel, Chief Marketing Officer at ghd, comments: “What we
wanted to do was to go beyond traditional eCommerce because we
wanted not just to market our products online, but to create a place
where consumers and stylists could congregate - a community that
could both serve and benefit from searches related to hair fashion and
trends as well as our products. This would require us to create relevant
content and allowed us to reach out to professional stylists directly
allowing them to become a key source of this content itself.”
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The Solution
ghd reviewed a range of platforms before selecting hybris B2C
Commerce along with Adobe Digital Marketing Suite for Web
Experience Management, both of which were implemented by
hybris’ and Adobe partner, Tacit Knowledge. Selecting hybris B2C
Commerce was a crucial decision, and very much based on the
proven performance and scalability of the solution. The company
was keen to ensure that its plans would be supported not just in
the short term but as it expanded its operation internationally in
the future.
Part of Tacit’s role was to help ghd bring together experts in digital
commerce and web content management. This would help ghd to
realise their vision. A key part of this was the implementation and
integration of the two class leading applications that Tacit selected, hybris B2C Commerce and Adobe Digital Marketing Suite for
Web Experience Management (including Adobe CQ Web Content
Management and Adobe CQ Digital Asset Management). This combination enabled the online business to scale and ensured business
users and community participants would be equipped to create,
manipulate and contribute content. In addition, the combination of
the hybris and Adobe solutions allows marketers to rapidly transform the entire shopping experience from initial brand awareness,
to immersive shopping experiences, to checkout and long-term
brand loyalty. Marketers can author authentic experiences and
offers based on marketing and merchandising strategies with a
cross-channel shopping experience.
“Our digital strategy required building a robust brand platform
engaging a large network of independent salons and professional
hair stylists sitting seamlessly with international commerce,”
said Spiegel, “We needed a solution that would scale to support
our brand innovation requirements, present and future, and the
combination of Adobe Web Experience Management and hybris
B2C Commerce provided that foundation. We are proud that key
brand advocates, professional hair stylists and salons will now
have unique tools to engage their clients.”
The first iteration of the new www.ghdhair.com site was launched in October 2011 and the main focus was to launch the new
commerce area. In the following Spring, the second iteration was
launched and became a “feed based” content zone for professional
stylists. The ‘Showcase’ section allows stylists to create individual
profiles and upload the site with their own images, videos, tips and
ideas. This content is stored on the hybris platform and ghd’s editorial team works with the stylists to ensure quality of content and to
help them promote it to both consumers and stylists.
Stuart Spiegel comments: “This community is critical. Our products are used and recommended by the best stylists, so we wanted a platform to engage with them. The premise is that our site
is a tool for the creative community – a way for them to highlight
their craft by uploading their own content. We curate stylist’s work
to surface on our homepage and build interest for the stylist, his/
her salon or the trend it represents.”
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“It is a dynamic social experience and for the consumer we offer
a powerful search tool, which means that if they are looking
for ideas for wavy hair, for example, they will be directed, via
a unique feed, to relevant articles and ideas directly from the
stylists, as well as products.”
Because the average customer might only purchase a ghd
straightener once every two or three years, the community
element to www.ghdhair.com provides an additional draw,
encouraging consumers to re-visit and engage with the brand on
a regular basis.
As well as the community, the site includes a huge gallery of stylish images and ideas to inspire visitors and a full online product
catalogue featuring regular promotions. A salon locator service
is being developed that will enable ghd stockists to be listed and
their location highlighted on a map. The plan is to ensure that a
link is available from www.ghdhair.com directly through to the
salon’s own website.
The Result
It is still early days for www.ghdhair.com, but already the company has been able to standardise the online offering across all
the territories in which it operates. “We simultaneously manage thirteen ‘storefronts’ from our head office in London,” said
Spiegel. “We’re finding it much easier to manage campaigns
and what previously took weeks to set up, now takes just hours,
or even minutes.”
This stems from the agility that is delivered by combining the
functionality of the two software platforms, hybris B2C Commerce and Adobe CQ. The unified platform gives ghd much greater
control over content authoring, content delivery, data management and brand engagement.
“hybris is the glue between content management and the
community and it has proven to be a very powerful Commerce
system. We have made extraordinary demands of both hybris
and Adobe CQ, but the response has been solid at every stage.
The role of Tacit has been very important for the success of the
integration. They have set up an interesting architecture working
from a blank canvas and the result is truly a best in class solution.” Spiegel commented.
The infrastructure behind this is in the cloud, which again provides
greater flexibility, advanced build techniques and toggling functionality, so that different features can be turned on and off as they
are needed.
ghd is noticing an increase in conversion rates and SEO, but
regards itself at the very beginning of a long process. The most significant results so far can be seen in the stylist community which is
generating a huge amount of interest and attracting dozens of new
profiles each week.
About hybris software
hybris software, an SAP Company, helps businesses around the globe sell more goods, services and digital content through every touchpoint, channel and device.
hybris delivers OmniCommerce™: state-of-the-art master data management for commerce and unified commerce processes that give a business a single view
of its customers, products and orders, and its customers a single view of the business. hybris’ omni-channel software is built on a single platform, based on open
standards, that is agile to support limitless innovation, efficient to drive the best TCO, and scalable and extensible to be the last commerce platform companies
will ever need. Both principal industry analyst firms rank hybris as a “leader” and list its commerce platform among the top two or three in the market. The same
software is available on-premise, on-demand and managed hosted, giving merchants of all sizes maximum flexibility. Over 500 companies have chosen hybris,
including global B2B sites W.W.Grainger, Rexel, General Electric, Thomson Reuters and 3M as well as consumer brands Toys“R”Us, Metro, Bridgestone, Levi’s,
Nikon, Galeries Lafayette, Migros, Nespresso and Lufthansa. hybris is the future of commerce™. www.hybris.com | sales@hybris.com
Version: December 2013 Subject to change without prior notice © hybris
Case Study ghd
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