D’Addario & Company has announced the first phase of a multi-faceted digital transformation effort to relaunch the company’s global B2B ecommerce marketplace. To help chart the course for this initiative and enable a team to successfully execute the research, strategy and front-end user experience, D’Addario partnered with Chicago-based design and digital innovation consultancy The Office of Experience (OX), systems architect Valtech, as well as technology partner Episerver Digital Experience Cloud.
D’Addario wanted to create a cloud-based platform that would enable global scalability, increasingly relevant customer experiences and more responsive levels of service—all while maintaining the human touch of the family owned-and-operated company headquartered on Long Island, N.Y. This “Inner Circle” project originated from a corporate initiative to solidify D’Addario’s position as the category leader in B2B musical instrument accessory sales online.
“We had done a great job with building our own solution for B2B customers,” Jim D’Addario, CEO of D’Addario & Company, Inc., said, “but we were ready to take our offering to the next level to deliver a simple and streamlined ecommerce experience that would exceed our global customers’ expectations and scale with them as their business expands.”
Steve Loud, Digital Commerce Director, said, “Having agreed upon and implemented the first successful version of Inner Circle, our new B2B ecommerce platform, our focus now turns to constant enhancements, using the voice of our customers and data-driven insights to prioritize additional features and enhancements. D’Addario has always been an organization committed to continuous improvement, and we are so excited to have a new foundation that aligns our digital customer experience with this philosophy.
For customers, Inner Circle supports self-service options, better data insights for optimizing accessory assortment, and high-quality user experiences for both desktop and mobile use. According to D’Addario, the manufacturer will now be able to provide quicker and more agile services to both its retail and wholesale customers around the world.
“D’Addario now has a viable and scalable solution, built on the Episerver Digital Experience Cloud and InRiver Product Information Management, which can support the company’s unique audience segments with the proper technical infrastructure and integrations so that moving forward they can easily support new products and customer segments. We’ve really focused on delivering a solution that enables them to succeed today and in the years to come,” said Olivier Padiou, Global COO of Valtech.