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K2 Sports creates websites 75% faster with a headless CMS

K2 faced many challenges with managing two CMSes, a homegrown solution and Demandware. The solutions relied heavily on developers and as a result, slowed down the speed in which marketers could deliver content.

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75%
faster website creation
90%
faster to manage and publish content
50%
boost in overall productivity
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Previously, K2 utilized a combination of a homegrown CMS and Demandware to manage their websites. This solution had many limitations in business and developer features and required costly high-level technical and specialized skills to manage K2's content and systems.

The challenge

Before Contentstack, K2 used a homegrown CMS and Demandware to manage eight websites across the organization. Aside from many of the functional challenges of utilizing separate CMSes, one of the gravest problems K2 experienced with the Demandware platform was the development requirements. Demandware is highly technical. Developers without specialized training often struggled to build and maintain the system.

As a result, the development team spent a lot of time hacking the system to get it to work the way they needed — and the marketing team was utterly reliant on developers to make any content changes. Additionally, when Salesforce acquired Demandware (renamed to SFCC), the increased costs became too expensive to justify the benefits. K2 determined they needed a more cost-effective, feature-rich and developer and marketer-friendly CMS.

Contentstack is a versatile headless CMS. Onboarding was straightforward and quick. It was easy for the developers to set up and integrate applications with, and it was easy for the project managers and marketing people to use.

Josh Harris | Senior Front-End Engineer, K2 Sports

The solution

Josh Harris, senior front-end engineer, evaluated various CMS vendors before choosing Contentstack headless CMS.

“Contentstack is far superior to the competition," Harris said. "It is clearer to understand and has better documentation. While testing the competitors’ demos, we found that they were cumbersome to use.”

One drawback to Demandware was that it didn’t support local development. K2 had to work in externally staged sandboxes, which slowed development significantly. Contentstack’s multi-environment feature made building, structuring data, and managing content more straightforward and faster. Developers at K2 can readily build in staging or any other environment they set up before committing to production.

In Demandware, activities as simple as updating a link required developer support and half a day to complete, in Contentstack, it takes 10 minutes.

“Since migrating to Contentstack, updating content has gotten 90% faster; furthermore, it has allowed K2 to launch eight websites in less than six months,” said Nicole Fugere, director of Web Services.

    Here are more ways in which Contentstack has helped K2:

  • Contentstack CMS is so intuitive it took no time to train K2’s marketers. They can now independently build landing pages and update content without a developer’s help.
  • Contentstack CMS is flexible and doesn’t require a specialized developer to maintain it, which has freed up developers to focus on more critical projects.
  • Contentstack’s extensible APIs allowed K2 to automate processes like updating product size charts and build integrations that are highly unique to their technology stack. As a result, K2 has reduced manual process errors and can adopt best-in-breed technologies that best fit their business needs.

We are thrilled that we chose Contentstack! It’s done everything we wanted. It’s helped us increase publishing quality content to build our brand. Publishing happens in an instant without a developer’s help.

Nicole Fugere | Director of Web Services, K2 Sports

The results

  • Websites created 75% faster
  • Publish content 90% faster
  • Boosted productivity by 50%

Company

K2 is an American company known for its pioneering of skis and snowboards. Today, K2 Sports has an international portfolio of world-renowned outdoor sports brands recognized as leaders in innovation, marketing and quality of products and services.

Industry

Retail & e-commerce

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