European fine wine trader migrates to hybris' commerce platform to support market expansion and provide a superior online buying experience

London - 29 July 2014: Sceneric, a leading web and e-commerce consultancy, today announced it has launched a new commerce platform for FINE+RARE, one of Europe's largest fine wine merchants. With the launch of its new multi-device optimised website built and enabled by Sceneric and running on the hybris commerce platform, FINE+RARE celebrates its 20th anniversary of trading by providing its customers with a state-of-the-art commerce and digital buying experience designed to take customer service and satisfaction to a new level.

The new FINE+RARE commerce platform, developed by Sceneric using the highly scalable hybris Commerce Accelerator, features powerful omni-channel and internationalisation capabilities that enable FINE+RARE to quickly respond to the changing expectations of its rapidly growing customer base.

"Around 30 per cent of visitors to our website use a mobile or tablet device - a number that is set to grow in the future," confirms Michael Barker, CTO at FINE+RARE. "With hybris we've been able to deploy a fully responsive commerce site, delivering a consistent and highly engaging experience for customers, regardless of how they choose to interact with us."

FINE+RARE have a live catalogue of over 50,000 products from over 5,000 producers. Availability and price updates are fed into the system in near-real-time.  hybris' powerful Product Content Management (PCM) solution centralises this data, enabling a ‘single view of product' across all channels. This data is then used to provide customers with a richer, more engaging experience. For example, the faceted search facility allows customers to more efficiently browse and search the wide range of wines, allowing customers to fine-tune their selections.

"We've been able to create a highly effective search experience for customers, making it possible for them to explore the breadth and range of our offering, personalising and refining their navigation along the way," stated Barker. "This was important to us because one of FINE+RARE's key competitive differentiators is the ability to give buyers immediate access to the widest choice of wines available, anywhere."

In addition, the intuitive interface of hybris' Web Content Management System (WCMS) has allowed business owners to take full ownership of all online content, images and attributes. This has dramatically speeded up and simplified the processes to update the site content.

The complex workflows, business rules and processes underpinning FINE+RARE's distinctive B2B/B2C marketplace model represented a major integration challenge for Sceneric. The new commerce platform seamlessly manages payment gateways, order delivery and shipping, market price graphs and bonded warehouse storage options. In addition, with offices in the UK and Hong Kong, and customers located in over 50 countries, FINE+RARE serves an extensive range of international markets and the new commerce solution provides the multi-currency facility the company needs, together with the ability to calculate local duty and tax charges.

"hybris was the only commerce platform that offered the ability to efficiently implement our highly unusual hybrid B2B/B2C model," said Barker. "The Sceneric team applied their deep knowledge of hybris to deliver the commerce platform we wanted, complete with the capabilities we needed."

The site was deployed onto hybris' OnDemand infrastructure, a fully managed service that gives FINE+RARE the instant scalability it needs to cope with anticipated growth as the company pursues aggressive expansion plans, which include extending its market reach both at home and overseas.

"Making the move to the cloud represents a major positive for us," said Barker. "The hybris OnDemand model future-proofs our digital commerce strategy and enables us to instantly leverage the enterprise-class processing power, networking, security and storage we need. All of which leaves us free to concentrate on the business in hand."

The flexibility of hybris has also enabled FINE+RARE to quickly deliver changes. During the user testing phase, customers were encouraged to provide feedback on their experience with the site. "We have been able, in just a few weeks, to deliver many of these customer-requested features. This is a clear testament to hybris' flexibility and the excellent foundation provided by Sceneric."

Jim Herbert, Founding Director of Sceneric, commented: "It's been a privilege to work with FINE+RARE, developing a commerce platform that positions the company for future growth as it enters new markets and extends its reach to new customer categories."

"With a site optimised to cope with the growing number of mobile customers, FINE+RARE is able to embark on a new era of sophisticated digital marketing and merchandising that's set to transform customers' online experience," he continued. "As the company enters new geographies, the ability enabled by Sceneric and hybris to create localised commerce sites featuring language and pricing customisations will enable FINE+RARE to speak with clarity to its highly discerning customers."