Cartier's digital transformation with Contentstack: enhancing brand integrity and operational efficiency

Cartier needed to ensure a consistent brand throughout a vast estate of digital properties. The solution was a headless digital experience platform that delivers brand integrity and improves operational efficiencies.

Cartier decided on a headless strategy to exploit the possibilities of reusing content to create a consistent, premium brand experience while remaining flexible to embrace innovative omnichannel technologies. Following a thorough market review, Cartier selected Contentstack’s headless content management system as part of a composable digital experience platform.

The challenge

Cartier deploys a range of digital experiences on multiple platforms. For example, boutique sales associates use an integrated catalog, stock, and payment capability delivered via an iPhone. However, Cartier’s most substantial digital properties are the global, regional, and issues-based websites that connect the brand to its stakeholders and customers. Some sites sit outside Cartier's control as reseller partners own and maintain them.

This plethora of websites challenged Cartier as updates and new content meant considerable demands on time and resources to reconfigure code. Occasionally, Cartier faced redeveloping entire sites. This led to poor brand alignment and required time-intensive, laborious processes to update content. The inconsistent technology created a lack of confidence that these sites performed correctly and delivered an experience fitting the Cartier brand.

Cartier reviewed its technology capabilities, including content management, as part of a strategic drive to ensure a consistent brand identity, improve the quality of its digital experience, maximize the use of content, and reduce technical support.

The solution

Cartier decided on a headless strategy to exploit the possibilities of reusing content to create a consistent, premium brand experience while remaining flexible to embrace innovative omnichannel technologies. Following a thorough market review, Cartier selected Contentstack’s headless content management system as part of a composable digital experience platform.

Cartier chose Contentstack based on the interface that allows creative staff to make changes and publish content quickly without interfering with technical users working with the underlying scripts. The flexibility of Contentstack led to unexpected benefits as Cartier teams have used extensions and content tags.

Contentstack is deployed throughout Cartier’s digital estate. It powers Cartier Watchmaking Encounters, the online destination for Cartier at the prestigious Watches & Wonders event. The concept is to digitally replicate the consumer experience of being part of the Cartier presence at the event.

This site was the proof of concept for implementing Contentstack throughout various sites, replacing a legacy CMS that demanded time-intensive annual updates. The site showed how Cartier could reuse content across partners’ websites to develop digital properties that could support events and remain consistent with the Cartier brand.

Following this success, Contentstack now powers the Cartier Women’s Initiative website and supports the digital experience of new collections such as Cartier Flora and Fauna. As a headless solution, Contentstack enables these sites to detect the viewing device and optimize the content. Reusing content has saved substantial time by allowing Cartier to rely less on external partners.

Contentstack has also been key to developing a template-based “website factory” within Cartier that creates localized sites to support discrete initiatives. This has reduced the time needed for site development from months to days. The site for Flora and Fauna was developed with this approach, spanning multiple countries and supporting staff in Cartier boutiques.

The “factory” creates mini-site concepts that resellers embed on their sites to have product and campaign content updated in real-time by the Cartier team. This ensures the integrity of the Cartier brand identity by retaining control over how products are portrayed on reseller and partner sites.

“Previously, we have relied on external partners for the various iterations of our online presence,” said Anastasia Goglova, international digital lead at Cartier. “In earlier stages of business, this was fine, but as the customer experiences of a brand — be it via a website, app, in-store, or any other part of the omnichannel experience — became more understood, it became clear that we needed to reassert control over the digital Cartier brand.

“Our choice of a MACH* strategy and the Contentstack headless CMS has enabled us to combine this control with various operational improvements and efficiencies. We have collapsed the time it takes for new sites to be developed from months to days, with early iterations of a new site submitted to our brand identity teams within hours. This has given our teams greater autonomy and means we combine agility and speed with a premium, high-end digital experience.

“This combination of efficiency, agility, consistency, and best practice combine to deliver the most important element of this project: The websites that are such a critical part of our digital portfolio are now more aligned and more performant. As a result, Cartier's digital customer experience improves, reflecting our commitment to becoming a reference for luxury in all aspects.”

* MACH: Microservices-based, API-first, cloud-native, headless

The results

• New websites developed in days, not weeks

• Ensured brand integrity throughout different initiatives

• Greater return on investment in content assets

About Contentstack & AWS

Contentstack deployed on Amazon Web Services (AWS) allows customers to harness the full power of cloud through industry leading AWS security and scalability paired with pre-built AWS integrations and extensions - making it easier than ever to implement and manage composable digital experiences at scale. Our recent addition of Amazon Bedrock enables Contentstack users to supercharge their digital experiences by leveraging advanced AI models from Amazon, Anthropic, and AI21 Labs, along with unlocking a host of new generative AI capabilities within Contentstack.

About Cartier

Cartier, the iconic luxury brand, was founded in Paris in 1847. Cartier designs, manufactures, distributes, and sells jewelry, leather goods, and watches. Now a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Swiss Richemont Group, Cartier operates over 200 stores in 125 countries. The Forbes Most Valuable Brand List last reported Cartier has a brand value of $12.2 billion.

The Cartier brand continues to strengthen, supported by a range of programs. Cartier and the Women's Forum joined McKinsey & Company and INSEAD Business School to create the Cartier Women's Initiative. This pioneering program supports women entrepreneurs through mentoring, funding, networking opportunities, and media visibility.