TheContainerStore.com Re-platform Project

The Opportunity

The Container Store is a top retailer offering storage and organization solutions. Leadership wanted to realize their vision of increasing their online presence, and meet their immediate and long-term business needs. To do this, The Container Store had determined to migrate their website off of the ATG Commerce Platform and on to an open-source solution. Credera was selected to leverage its experience with the ATG Commerce Platform and their knowledge in open-source alternatives to implement a framework, known as Broadleaf Commerce, and to build a new website using this framework.

The Approach

Credera performed an initial discovery phase to determine the feasibility, duration, and cost of the project based on the functional requirements provided by The Container Store and code from the existing website. Credera worked together with The Container Store’s team to migrate the site from a license-fee based model to an open-source model. By doing so added the ability to scale for high-traffic periods without additional license fees, such as times when national television shows promote their products (The Oprah Winfrey Show). Moving to an open-source platform also provided added functionality to allow customers to checkout anonymously – not having to create an account on the website prior to purchase and to have one shared view of a customer for both the website and retail store.

Along with performing the implementation and direction of the project, Credera provided a working example of Agile Methodology to design, develop, and test software that has since been adopted by the organization.

The Results

Prior to the re-platform, The Container Store incurred insurmountable license fees during high traffic periods on their website, in addition to, the infrastructure required to handle the additional load. As a result of moving to an open-source model, The Container Store benefits from the following:

1. flexibility to quickly setup additional infrastructure without the concern of additional license fees

2. customers are no longer required to register with the website to purchase, which will increase sales

3. customers can provide and update an address and phone number in their customer record from either the web or retail store and the changes are effective for both systems; and

4. adoption of the Agile methodology company-wide has resulted in better communication with business analysts and higher quality software

• ATG
• ECommerce
• ECommerce Platform
• Broadleaf