E-commerce Sylius
Services

Bongénie: digital replatforming for a high-end retailer with Sylius

Bongénie (formerly Bongénie Grieder) is a long-established name and an icon of Swiss luxury fashion. Clothing, shoes, accessories and home decor: the latest trends for women, men, children and the home are available in some fifteen stores (Geneva, Lausanne, Zurich, Bern…). The retailer also runs an e-commerce site, bongenie.ch, an outlet site, outlet.bongenie.ch, and a loyalty platform (bg-club.ch). At the time, all of these sites ran on an aging monolithic platform that was holding back Bongénie’s digital strategy and the rollout of new services. So in 2022, the retailer issued an RFP to build its new e-commerce platform. And the Synolia x Mezcalito x Sylius trio won the project!

 

bongenie-galetA seamless experience worthy of the brand’s reputation

A benchmark in high-end fashion, Bongénie wanted to replatform its digital ecosystem to deliver a higher-quality experience on a faster, more scalable platform. An experience that humanizes and enhances the digital relationship, helping build a privileged, personalized connection with end customers… In short, the brand wanted a seamless omnichannel shopping experience, with the same quality online as in store.

 

 

 

As part of this ambitious replatforming project, Bongénie issued an RFP and launched a review of e-commerce solutions. 

The Bongénie brief

Replatform the brand’s e-commerce ecosystem to deliver a premium digital experience, seamless across online and offline.

Synolia x Sylius


The Synolia team, backed by our friends at the Mezcalito agency, immediately grasped what was at stake in this replatforming project:

  • Deliver innovative yet reliable, high-performance solutions tailored to the expectations of business teams and customers.
  • Elevate the brand image and grow the digital business with a true omnichannel strategy.

 

SynoliaxSylius

 

Our consulting and e-commerce expertise across the best solutions on the market also made the difference!

Our services: consulting, specifications and scoping, design and build (UI/UX by the Period agency), integration and development, training, and application maintenance.

Listening and advice

Since January 2023 and throughout the engagement, Synolia has advised the Bongénie teams: solution selection, the shift from a multichannel to an omnichannel strategy, methodology, project management and collaboration with internal teams…

Architecture

Beyond its advisory role, the Synolia team also brought its e-commerce and Sylius expertise to the entire specification, scoping, design and build phase.

Since go-live, our team has also handled knowledge transfer and training, as well as support and application maintenance.

Agility

Ideas emerge and projects evolve… On a replatforming of this scale, agile was the only approach we could take. That made the involvement of teams on both sides essential.

“We were a great match. We were in daily contact with the teams. We built a relationship of trust and got along very well. We all moved forward together in the same direction, with a shared goal.”
Jeanne Darrieus, E-commerce Project Manager, Synolia

Choosing the solution: Sylius

Sylius was one of the shortlisted solutions for this ambitious project. Our analysis took the following criteria into account:

  • Fit between standard features and the stated requirements
  • The platform’s ability to evolve toward specific functional coverage (to support an ambitious roadmap)
  • The platform’s ability to integrate with third-party solutions
  • Overall performance
  • Implementation costs and recurring costs

Sylius was the solution selected for this project: a lightweight, flexible solution that covers only the core of the customer’s needs, is built to be extended wisely, limits technical legacy, targets performance and optimizes costs…

“For the Bongénie project, Sylius was a pragmatic choice that puts performance and the experience of every user first”
Jeanne Darrieus, E-commerce Project Manager, Synolia

Project specifics

  • Connection to the Akeneo PIM via the Sylius connector developed by Synolia
  • Scheduled command management with daily imports (prices, stock…) via the plugin developed by Synolia
  • Connectivity to an ESB with live calls
  • Attraqt for merchandising and search
  • Sanity for CMS content management
  • Connection to an external resource to display store information in real time, along with physical store inventory.
  • Size converter/adapter by supplier and by country.
  • Specific returns process with a simplified flow to improve the customer experience

 

Our DXP approach

Synolia didn’t “just” build an e-commerce platform: we took into account an existing ecosystem that is complex and constantly evolving. Bongénie’s e-commerce platform is now connected to a wide range of solutions: PIM (Akeneo), DAM (Keepeek), payments (SaferPay), merchandising and search (Attraqt), stores (Bridge), CRM (Salesforce), ESB/ERP, FAQ (SmartTribune), CMS (Sanity)…

Our role was to streamline the interactions between these building blocks of the digital ecosystem so that data flows run smoothly and reliably. The result is a lightweight, high-performance e-commerce platform, connected to every useful service and built for an omnichannel customer experience.

Results

Bongénie’s e-commerce platform has been live since September 3, 2024! But the work doesn’t stop there. Our team now handles application maintenance and is already working on exciting new projects to keep the site evolving.

“The Bongénie team is multidisciplinary, with a very good knowledge of its IT systems and of e-commerce in general. I think we learned a lot together. And we’re happy to continue the relationship through application maintenance after go-live.”
Jeanne Darrieus , E-commerce Project Manager, Synolia

 

On the client side, the Bongénie teams have set themselves ambitious goals, and we hope to see them achieved very soon!

Share this case study:

Discover our other references