“We needed to create an online presence that would mirror the strength of our other 400 physical stores. It needed to be a site that would be secure, efficient and reliable. Our customers can enjoy a robust shopping experience through our dynamic web design, they can check out a full shopping cart with ease and they can do all this quickly since our website is hosted on a stable and fast network backbone.”
– Jamie Schreter, eCommerce Marketing Director ,Bentley
About Bentley:
The Bentley Group is a Canadian chain of retail stores operating since 1987. The company has more than 400 stores which sell retail luggage, purses, backpacks, briefcases, sport duffle bags and related accessories under the Bentley, Access and Unic banners. Bentley has grown rapidly in the last 20 years and is the largest retailer of luggage in Canada and the largest specialty retailer of luggage in North America.
The Challenge:
As the largest retailer of luggage in Canada, Bentley knows a strong online presence is needed to stay competitive. Todays consumers are educated, savvy and most of all want choice. Having an easy-to-browse website, thats always available and robust, are essential to ensure online shoppers make it through to checkout successfully.
Bentley examined the technology parameters necessary to build a competitive, secure, and reliable sales vehicle that would enhance the customer shopping experience online. They realized the need for a Web hosting company that would allow for growth, and a platform that would adhere to Canadian government online shopping laws while still being user-friendly. Bentley turned to one of the fastest growing eCommerce platform providers in the world, Magento, for help.
Magento referred The Bentley Group to its Gold Solution Partner, Toronto-based Demac Media, to design and develop a website running on the Magento Enterprise eCommerce platform. This website would be supported by another one of Magentos and Demacs partners – PEER 1 Hosting, a top global hosting provider of mission-critical websites and applications.
The Solution:
Bentley worked with Demac Media to help them design a platform that would suit their business needs, communicate their brand and ensure that the technology would integrate with their current business operations. With the help of Demac and Magento, Bentley would have the opportunity to improve the customer shopping experience, increase conversation rates and increase their average order value, while decreasing their operating costs.
On the back-end, The Bentley Group worked with Demac Media and PEER 1 Hosting. The site is now supported by a PEER 1 Hosting database server and a web server. Like with all websites hosted with PEER 1, Bentley is leveraging the providers wholly-owned and operated FastFiber Network – a network known for it consistent performance, stability and security.
The PEER 1 Hosting offering, combined with the Magento Enterprise platform, enables The Bentley Group to not only provide a more reliable online browsing and shopping experience, but also improved functionality including catalog navigation and search functions. This new eCommerce platform and hosting solution was also done at a fraction of the cost of traditional telco models.
“What drew us to Demac Media and PEER 1 Hosting was their unique partnership model with Magento,” said Jamie Schreter, eCommerce Marketing Director, Bentley. “In the eCommerce space, website stability and speed are two ingredients for success. As we service consumers across North America, we cant afford downtime, as five to ten minutes of site downtime could mean a loss of one or two orders.”
