Selle Italia

Background

Selle Italia’s great adventure began at the end of the 19th century. Once it was taken over by the Bigolin family, the company’s strategy focused on ongoing innovation through the use of new materials and production techniques, thus becoming a leading company both in the national and international markets. Thanks to the close collaboration with the best physicians and biomechanical scientists, it was able to produce bike saddles fitting any anatomical shape and meeting any requirements on the part of cyclists.

Its performing designs and top-level production quality are among the most defining characteristics of the company’s identity, which – after some serious consideration on its possible commercial and reputational prospects – decided to undertake a digitalization process. 

In order to improve its digital image and create a new business instrument, the brand embarked on a new challenging path: the development of a new B2C ecommerce solution.

Objectives

– Selling online and increasing business opportunities.
– Communicating the brand identity.
– Improving user experience.
– Optimizing process management.
– Enhancing corporate reputation.

Strategies and tools

Selle Italia, therefore, selected expert partners and innovative technologies, entrusting the Calicantus team with the development of the new online shop so as to export the excellence of Made in Italy all over the world through a direct channel to the final consumer. 

The first step was gathering all necessary information to develop the project, followed by a thorough internal analysis and an ongoing dialogue between the development team and the graphic design team. Calicantus’s developers were thus able to translate aesthetic and communication requirements into concrete technological solutions on the SaaS platform selected for the development of this project: BigCommerce.

The brand communication, history and philosophy, and the unique characteristics of its offer are crucial for users to lose themelves in the navigation experience. Equally important is the presentation of the product catalogue, which should enable consumers to explore all the features and help them choose the right item.

A fundamental prerequisite for the success of the whole project was the possibility to outsource the management of online orders: Calicantus, therefore, integrated the Selle Italia platform with its own systems and services taking care of the whole chain, from customer care to accounting, products’ storage, and tracking up to package delivery to the final customer.

In addition, in order to make the brand digital image coherent, an ecommerce solution was created specifically for the U.S. market. The integration of the platform with the competent distributor spared the company the trouble of reconsidering current business terms thus preserving the best management of U.S. orders.