From Catwalk to Cart: How Zadig & Voltaire Prepares for Growth with Magento Commerce

Paris fashion house Zadig & Voltaire has a passionate following outside the mainstream, putting out collections that redefine modern femininity with wild, free and rock-fueled wardrobe essentials that embody strength and sensuality. Over the brand’s 20-year history, a growing fan base of celebrities and everyday consumers have embraced its upscale style.

Amid its increasing popularity, Zadig & Voltaire’s recent collaboration with supermodel Kate Moss marks a turning point in the company’s evolution to becoming a global luxury brand. In addition to being the new face of the brand, the British supermodel worked with Zadig & Voltaire’s artistic director Cecilia Bönström on a line of new handbags now available online and in-store.

The partnership was a perfect match, combining the brand’s rock-and-roll style with Moss’s edginess and global appeal. This, coupled with Zadig & Voltaire’s new partnership with the NBA on a basketball-focused collection, has propelled Zadig & Voltaire into the headlines, fueling interest in its designs and opening new opportunities for growth.

Zadig & Voltaire plans to add to its 350 brick-and-mortar stores around the world – including fast-growing markets in Asia – while bolstering ecommerce capabilities to achieve ambitious revenue goals. As part of the expansion, the company hired its first-ever Chief Technology Officer to help drive a digital transformation.

With the website often being the first stop for consumers wanting to experience the Zadig & Voltaire brand, Jonathan Ribas, Chief Technology Officer at Zadig & Voltaire says that creating an effortless path to purchase was mission critical as they look to expand their physical and online presence into new markets.

A model platform: making the move to Magento 2.3

The combination of his timely arrival and the company’s goals to elevate the ecommerce experience helped Jonathan get approval to upgrade to the latest version of Magento’s commerce platform, Magento Commerce 2.3. It also helped that he was able to draw on his experience as a certified Magento developer and previous customer.

He was most attracted to flexibility and scalability that the platform offered in allowing them to develop customized features, while remaining in control of their roadmap. In his mind, there was no other platform like it in the market.

The first order of business was building the eCommerce architecture, replacing some of the manual processes, and taking full advantage of available integrations. For example, rather than dragging and dropping multiple products into specific categories, Zadig & Voltaire can now filter by attributes and populate categories automatically. That means that instead of having to merchandize according to ‘women’ and ‘dresses’, they can automatically select ‘women’s dresses.’

This feature alone saved Zadig & Voltaire a lot of time and manpower as this task was previously relegated to several people on the team whose sole task was merchandising. With the additional time, the team could now focus on strategy or uncovering new tools for personalization.

From runway to runaway sales

The U.S. site was the first to roll out Magento Commerce 2.3, with the 10 European sites to follow by the end of the year. All will plug into a newly designed global website powered by Magento. A headless, PWA-driven approach will further boost performance – especially on mobile – reducing loading times to keep visitors engaged on the site.

To support a global omnichannel experience, Magento Commerce gives Zadig & Voltaire added insight into stock availability in both its U.S. and European warehouses with the Magento 2 Multisource Inventory (MSI) extension. Customers can also purchase items online and pick them up in one of the company’s retail stores, helping to bridge the divide between the online and in-store experience and encouraging people to visit a physical store. With MSI, Zadig & Voltaire could provide a truly omnichannel experience.

Zadig & Voltaire also built an additional data layer to better track clicks on the site, giving the brand reliable insight into visitor behaviors, so marketers can design experiences that translate into more and bigger sales.

And it’s a strategy that’s already paying off: online performance to date is up compared to last year, and visibility is at an all-time high thanks to more focused marketing efforts and high-profile collaborations. With Magento Commerce powering online purchases, Zadig & Voltaire found the perfect fit to reach its e-commerce goals – and the closets of fashion lovers worldwide.

Zadig & Voltaire uses Magento Commerce to support its growing global fashion brand, localizing experiences across channels for seamless shopping everywhere.