Customer Stories
Carhartt: Exceeding the expectations of a growing consumer base on a new e-commerce experience
Carhartt prepares for the next frontier
Apparel from Carhartt Inc. is recognized worldwide by hard workers, outdoor enthusiasts, and fashion lovers. Carhartt’s transformation into a modern fashion icon proved great for business, but its customer experience was strained. To meet the needs of many different types of customers, Carhartt created one unified e-commerce experience with the SAP Commerce Cloud solution.
fewer custom code modifications (down to 200 from 2,000).
milliseconds for Web page load
time, down from seconds.
Carhartt’s job is to get products into the hands of hardworking folks, when and how they want them. SAP Commerce Cloud helps us do just that.
Donavan Marchywka
Director, Digital Solutions, Carhartt Inc.
The Challenge
Meeting customer demand during peak sales and disruption
Carhartt was born out of the blue-collar capital of Detroit in 1889. Since then, the workwear company has grown into a modern fashion icon – and has stayed true to its roots by providing sturdy and comfortable apparel for everyone.
For Carhartt, meeting the needs of fashion-forward shoppers, outdoor enthusiasts, and everyday workers was a challenge, especially when the company didn’t have a strong e-commerce presence.
In fact, Carhartt’s IT landscape held the company back from many new revenue opportunities. It couldn’t capitalize on the peak sales days important to its growing consumer base, such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
So, Carhartt needed to build the resilience to live up to its legacy and provide products for the people who depend on them, whether for work, play, or fashion.
We needed a solution that could stand up to task during the busiest times of the year. SAP Commerce Cloud holds up from an infrastructure and performance standpoint. The solution reacts to traffic so customers can connect with our products.
Donavan Marchywka
Director, Digital Solutions, Carhartt Inc.
The Solution
Embedding resiliency into order-to-cash processes
As the foundation for its company-wide digital transformation, Carhartt recently implemented SAP S/4HANA. This new, intelligent foundation for core business processes including ERP empowered the company to take advantage of software that could bring Carhartt into the future. Chief among them is the SAP Commerce Cloud solution.
Carhartt chose SAP Commerce Cloud to transform experiences for customers – and the business. Now, Carhartt is operating on enhanced order-to-cash processes, which has smoothed ordering for customers and fulfillment for the business.
SAP Commerce Cloud provides the tools and technologies necessary to create modern e-commerce experiences that draw on data from across the enterprise. In Carhartt’s case, the solution helped create a unified e-commerce experience that customers can access on their desktop and mobile devices.
SAP Preferred Success services continuously supported the initial go-live of SAP Commerce Cloud. The go-live check service for SAP Commerce Cloud provided Carhartt with recommendations that the company used to simplify, enhance, and improve search and navigation features as well as catalog design.
The Result
Connecting customers with products faster and more reliably
With SAP Commerce Cloud, Carhartt customers can find and purchase the right products faster than ever. Pages on Carhartt’s e-commerce site load quickly, and fewer shoppers abandon their product searches and carts.
Previously, the company had measured the time it took pages to load in seconds. Now, it’s taking that measurement in milliseconds. Today, there’s just 150 to 200 milliseconds of loading time between each page.
Customers can also find their way around the Carhartt e-commerce site more easily. SAP Commerce Cloud empowered the merchandising team to rethink its strategy for product placement – as well as the overall e-commerce design. Rather than retrofitting the new e-commerce experience to the layout of the old site, Carhartt took the opportunity to transform this experience into something entirely new and innovative. In its new design, Carhartt incorporated years of data and insights on what makes an e-commerce experience the most effective.
When we transformed our e-commerce experience on SAP Commerce Cloud, not only did we get the benefits of this new technology, but we also got the chance to rethink the design of our site – and do it right.
Donavan Marchywka
Director, Digital Solutions, Carhartt Inc.
Future Plans
Providing innovative experiences for even more customers
Enhanced e-commerce isn’t enough for Carhartt. The company has its sights set on improvements to the entire customer experience. This includes experiences in Carhartt’s retail stores, where the company plans to use SAP Commerce Cloud to enable customers to buy online and pick up in store, also known as BOPIS. BOPIS is becoming an increasingly important part of the customer experience for a growing portion of Carhartt’s consumer base – namely, its customers with an eye on fashion.
Carhartt also intends to provide this improved customer experience to customers in more countries. In 2023, the company plans to expand into Europe. It hopes SAP Commerce Cloud can help enable this expansion with its unified customer data profiles, which make it easier for businesses to manage shopper data and comply with relevant privacy legislation.
SAP helps Carhartt run better
Key business outcomes and benefits
- Built a modern, unified e-commerce experience for a diverse consumer base
- Met customer demand for mobile access to e-commerce
- Created the foundation for future innovation in customer experience
- Improved system performance to withstand shopper demand during peak sales days
- Gained resilience to withstand disruption and fulfill customer orders with minimal cancellations
Featured solutions and services
- SAP Commerce Cloud is a cloud-based solution that enables an e-commerce platform at scale integrated with data from across the enterprise.
- SAP Preferred Success provides ongoing personalized guidance to enable faster solution adoption and optimization in the cloud.
About Carhartt
Carhartt Inc. is an apparel brand with a portfolio spanning workwear, outdoor gear, hunting accessories, and – more recently – streetwear. Since 1998, Carhartt has provided dependable products that meet the needs of a hardworking people everywhere.