Since beginning at Hannah’s kitchen table in 2012, Wrendale Designs has grown into a significant operation that trades in the UK, US, Europe, and Asia. The product line has grown to include a range in collaboration with Portmeirion and has scooped no less than five Henries awards and, in 2019, a Queen’s Award for Export, recognising excellence in international trade.
POP’s relationship with Wrendale Designs began in 2017 when we took over the maintenance and support of their pre-existing CS-Cart e-commerce websites. We performed technical optimisation work and expanded their functionality as much as possible within the confines of the platform and its integration with the semi-bespoke stock management system.
Introducing Magento 2
At the end of 2019, we began creating a new website. One that could handle all of the Wrendale Designs’ storefronts (two per website, trade and retail) whilst minimising or eliminating the duplication of content and product management generated by having multiple stand-alone sites.
We developed the new platform using Magento 2, with a single installation providing multiple sites (one per geographical location) and storefronts within those (trade and retail).
POP created the new site in-house and initially followed a wireframing and prototyping process. We liaised with Wrendale’s design team, responsible for much of the company’s commercial and marketing output, before developing and integrating the site with multiple third-party systems such as the stock management platform, Hubspot, Google Analytics and social media.
Migration and integration with semi-bespoke stock management
A further challenge of migrating Wrendale Designs to the new platform was transferring the product, order and customer data from a relatively unknown and unsupported system like CS-Cart. We developed bespoke scripts to enable this, which was not without its challenges. Ultimately, it was quicker and more accurate than the manual entry of thousands of product lines and variants.
One of the last processes before pushing the new site live was comprehensive site testing with the stock management system. During this phase, we helped the system suppliers find and fix any issues with their integration and developed scripts to provide them with extensive debug data.
We have continued to support the Magento 2 website. We have worked on multiple ongoing projects to expand the platform’s functionality, refine the user experience and extend it with additional geographical storefronts.
