Europe’s largest wholesale distributor of professional hair and beauty products, Pro-Duo, has partnered with digital commerce agency Astound Commerce UK to upgrade its French and German ecommerce sites as modern, agile, and responsive trading platforms designed to increase conversions.
First opened in Belgium in 1999, Pro-Duo, now part of Sally Beauty Holdings, has more than 190 stores across Europe and offers more than 5,000 products for hair, skin, and nails. Its products include professional lines and an extensive selection of exclusive brands.
With 25 percent of the global personal care market predicted to be online by 2024, Pro-Duo wanted to ensure it was delivering an exceptional customer experience by creating highly relevant, personalized, and frictionless customer journeys. Pro-Duo’s legacy sites, despite being on the Salesforce Commerce Cloud (SFCC) platform, did not have the necessary user interface to meet these aspirations, resulting in low conversion rates in comparison to existing sites (also on the SFCC platform) within the Sally Beauty portfolio.
Sally Beauty has a long-standing partnership with Astound Commerce UK. Astound implemented the successful launch of multiple sites for the beauty retailer in 2017, driving record online sales with a 26 percent increase in revenue after just three months. Based on this track record of success, when it became apparent the Pro-Duo sites needed upgrading, Sally Beauty turned once again to Astound as its digital partner.
Astound configured and integrated SFCC as well as multiple third-party applications to provide improved online experiences for shoppers. Despite the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and disruption this caused to business globally, the project was delivered on schedule, with both the French and German sites going live in March 2020. Central to ensuring the project deadline was met was a custom reference application, designed by Astound Commerce UK, that allows multiple brands and locations to leverage the central code base. This unique solution allows Sally Beauty to launch new sites swiftly and makes support and new-feature enhancement more efficient.
“Astound Commerce UK is a trusted partner that consistently delivers best-of-breed solutions while also being a pleasure to work with,” says Richard Surridge, ecommerce director for Sally Europe. “Across both projects we went through a detailed consultation process, and the Astound team assessed our business model to provide a solution that is scalable and future-proof. Given that COVID-19 has irrevocably changed the retail landscape, it is essential to have an expert digital partner, such as Astound, to ensure our businesses succeed long-term.”
“We were delighted to work with the team at Sally Beauty again, as it is always a great affirmation of our approach when customers bring new projects to us,” says Astound Commerce UK Managing Director Terry Hunter. “Client satisfaction is at the core of our business model, and I’m proud that companies who work with us stay with us and continue to hold us as their systems integrator partner of choice.”