+2.5%
Variance of Hours: SOW vs Launch
2x
Faster Site Speed
+50%
Faster Checkout
The Situation
First Gear is a leader in the die-cast replica custom imprinting and custom tooling business since its founding in 1992. Although they produce high-quality products, their website was lacking far behind.
Their current platform had an outdated design and lacked basic features and functionality. Backend management was cumbersome and making simple content changes was no simple task. With their growth in online sales, they were looking to add new features and functionality but found themselves handcuffed by their non-flexible, non-expandable aged platform.
In addition to managing their own site, First Gear was managing other branches of their business, including a customer/retail side, business customers, custom imprinting, custom microsites, order fulfillment for private third-parties and the diecast replica site for Komatsu, a Japanese multinational corporation that manufactures construction equipment. They were looking for a solution to bring all these segments of their business under one platform for easy management.
The Solution
First Gear went looking for a new platform and was attracted to Magento’s rich, out-of-the-box feature set that fulfilled many of the functionality requirements they were looking for. On top of that, they were impressed with the ability to manage multiple stores under one installation of Magento.
The Success
We launched First Gear on the latest version of Magento Cloud. They were able to take full advantage of Magento’s deep set of native features and functionality to deliver a site that was easy to use for both business and retail customers.
Notable on the project was the low average variance between estimated hours vs. actual:
| Estimate | Actual | Variance | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Original scope | 482 | 466 | -4% |
| Total with scope additions | 624 | 682 | +9% |
| Average variance | +2.5% |
All aspects of First Gear’s business are now under one instance of Magento which has freed up hours of time for their staff. The design is updated and better represents their brand. Content management is a breeze, even across multiple sites and “microsites.” Leveraging Magento’s flexibility and scalability, First Gear can now create as many custom catalog “mini-sites” as they need without our support or developer involvement.
All major performance metrics have improved, including site speed, site search UI and a streamlined checkout.
“A major feature we were looking for in a platform was the ability to manage multiple sites in one place, with the ability to freely update our own content. With Magento, we found exactly that. With just one Magento installation, we’re able to manage our main site, plus our other microsites for third parties in one backend. Making changes is also super easy, whether it’s pricing or content, and the entire admin area is very intuitive. Our previous website was outdated and lacked many basic features and functionality and Magento has helped us leap way ahead of where we were.”
-Adam Knight, Creative Director
