The United Kingdom’s leading motoring and cycling retailer, Halfords Group plc, has partnered with digital commerce agency Astound Commerce to provide a unified, seamless customer experience across its retail and auto center businesses. Founded in 1892, Halfords now has 465 stores across the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland. In addition to offering motoring, cycling, and leisure products, Halfords provides Ministry of Transport (MOT) auto service and repairs.
The company’s website supports many multichannel journeys, with approximately 20 percent of total sales delivered online and 80 percent of online orders collected in-store. Halfords wanted to enhance the overall customer experience by creating highly relevant, data-driven, personalized and frictionless customer journeys across all touchpoints.
However, the company’s IBM WebSphere Commerce Suite (WCS) legacy platform did not have the functionality necessary to allow for developments and site enhancement in a timely or cost-effective manner. To support its digital transformation, Halfords selected Salesforce Commerce Cloud (SFCC), and chose Astound Commerce, with its extensive experience implementing and maximizing SFCC platform performance for high-profile retailers globally, as its digital partner.
To deliver the solution, Astound configured and integrated SFCC and more than 30 third-party services, including DataCash, JRNI, Amplience, and Trustpilot. The Astound team also provided consultancy services, advising on best practices in line with other leading retail and service providers that have best-of-breed ecommerce capabilities. Astound Commerce will manage support and upgrades for Halfords’ online platform, making this a long-term, strategic partnership.
“Our in-house digital team worked closely with Astound during the discovery phase to ensure a clear vision for the digital transformation,” says Emma Mead, digital director at Halfords. “Once we completed discovery, we rolled into a build cadence where we got a constant view of progress and valuable consultancy and input to support other elements of the project. This project has been such a one-team effort, and Astound has been an incredible partner throughout. We are so grateful for the hard work, commitment, and tenacity and are very excited to have launched. This project is a huge milestone for Halfords.”
“Halfords is an iconic British retailer, and they wanted an ecommerce platform that was future-proof, giving them a unified, strong brand presence beyond bricks and mortar, and that is what Astound has delivered,” says Terry Hunter, managing director for Astound Commerce UK. “We are proud to have helped pave the way for Halfords to become a leading omnichannel brand.”