Mountain Warehouse has launched a new ecommerce platform in partnership with BigCommerce to accelerate innovation and global growth, Retail Week can reveal.

The outdoor clothing and equipment retailer has replaced its legacy system with one that aims to improve scalability, flexibility, and customer experience.

The new platform will eventually enable the retailer to accelerate the speed of implementing new features and initiatives, improve security, reliability and compliance, and allow for integration with third-party and in-house solutions.

Speaking to Retail Week, Mountain Warehouse senior delivery manager Sam Biddlecombe said the project took around 18 months to complete across all of Mountain Warehouse’s 11 markets and its two sister brands.

“We’ve got an implementation plan regarding rollout in certain countries at certain times,” he explained.

“The UK market is our biggest for retail stores, but also for online presence, and that’s already on the new, complete new technology stack.”

BigCommerce added that the rollout also included “several advanced capabilities” tailored to Mountain Warehouse’s business model, including custom checkout experiences to support gift cards and multiple payment methods, complex order handling, and click-and-collect functionality.

Q&A with Sam Biddlecombe 

Why did you want a partner for your ecommerce overhaul?

“Historically, we have done all our technology in-house. Our chief technology officer has been with the company for nearly enough from the beginning, and we’ve had a long loyal technology base. What we’re really looking for is a partner that can give us flexibility, but not too much flexibility. It worked well for us to kind of follow BigCommerce’s product innovation, but also gives us the flexibility to do the things that work well for Mountain Warehouse, and customise things for our customers.”

How does the old in-house platform compare to the new one?

“If the website did break, we trust BigCommerce and our technology partners to keep the lights on. So that’s been a positive, and also the speed of implementing new features. We’re looking to implement new features 50% quicker than we did historically, which is good for us in delivering value to our customers. It’s also good for our developers as well, because they can actually work on really fun things, rather than 50% of that maintenance.”

How does the online platform line up with the rest of the channels, such as stores?

“I think this is where data is really important for us. We want to make sure our data is accessible for all of our technology users. So we need to know if a customer goes into our store and buys an item, we need to recognise that customer may come to the website as well, and vice versa. 

“We’re not there yet, but it’s something we’re working towards. We know where you are as a customer – we know you’re on our website, we know you want this item, how about we give you the option that this can be collected by you in a small timeframe from your local store, because we know that’s your local store. It’s that personalisation message, recognising our customers and really giving them the value that they’re actually looking for.”

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