David's Bridal Empowers Its Business with IBM WebSphere Commerce

A fashion retailer specializing in bridal wear had a very primitive website and chose IBM's eCommerce Solution to grow as its business needs changed. Now averaging a 20% growth year over year on web traffic, the company shows WebSphere Commerce is the best-of- breed solution.

Video Transcript

Director, Interactive Technology
David’s Bridal Corporation

We are a fashion retailer specializing in bridal wear. Several years ago we had a very primitive website, it was very catalog-driven and then we started to realize; the more we know about her, the more we can help her and the more we can help get other services there for her at the same point.

We needed to have something where we could take orders. We also needed something that can manage our catalog, we have a ton of product to be looked at and the other key thing was we get a lot of volume, we have a lot of traffic. We need something to sustain high amounts of load and grow and expand as we needed to.

The IBM eCommerce Solution really presented as what we needed. We didn’t necessarily need a product, we needed a platform that we can build upon, expand and grow with as our business needs changed.

So IBM helped us through the implementation in a ton of fashions. They did lend us with a very good implementer early on and they have been a great partner to bring the right business resources internal and external, the right IT resources we need to help augment our staff.

We are averaging from traffic overall about a 20% growth year over year over the past several years. We saw a year ago on average of 20 maybe 25 pages per visit, now we are closer to 30 pages per visit which means she is reading more, she is staying more and we are starting to understand better now by using our tools such as Commerce and Coremetrics.

We know to grow our company we have to get a bigger footprint international. So to get a sense of where should we go next, we are able to leverage our solutions within commerce and the web to really kind of feel out well if we go slightly north into Canada, what can we do? If we go across the pond over to the UK and throughout Europe what could we do?

We are not an IT organization at David’s Bridal, we don’t want to build technology. I want to empower my business with the technology which means I want to work with partners that know what they doing.

Some of the best things with IBM and with WebSphere Commerce is it is the best of the breed solution. They bring some of the sharpest minds to the table and they bring not only internally from IBM but external partners, external companies that do what you do and can help shape what you are doing and work collectively as a larger community to deliver a good product and a good solution.

If we can do that, ultimately she will remember us and that’s what matters to us more than anything.