In the chilly world of cooler companies, there are plenty of players...but then, standing all above the competition, there are Yeti Coolers. Known for their range of cooler products, YETI is watchword for quality, a symbol of cool (pun intended).
When cachet meets quality, like it does with YETI products, it should come as no surprise to hear that YETI continues to enjoy growth on a, well, a Yeti-sized scale. Going from $90mm a year in sales in 2013 to over $450+mm in 2015. Having succeeded due to the quality of their design and the super-rugged premium outdoor gear for which they are known, they continue to enjoy a cult-like following of their growing product line.
Key to this is their ability to tell a good brand story that resonates: the YETI Coolers Stories site. It houses well crafted stories from their Ambassadors who "redefine what it means to live a wild life" With their explosive growth, YETI needed to quickly scale their ecommerce site.
That is where Appnovation and our Drupal 8 expertise comes in...improving on the earlier Drupal version, hosting on Rackspace, improving the YETI experience.
About the project
There's coolers, then there's YETI Coolers....just like there's Drupal, then there's Drupal 8....
Yeti Coolers, renowned for their range of cooler products, has been experiencing explosive growth, going from $90mm a year in sales in 2013 to over $450m in 2015. Having succeeded due to the quality of their design and the super-rugged premium outdoor gear for which they are known, they continue to enjoy a cult-like following of their growing product line.
Key to this is their ability to tell a good brand story that resonates : the YETI Coolers Stories site. It houses well crafted stories from their Ambassadors who "redefine what it means to live a wild life" With their explosive growth, YETI needed to quickly scale their ecommerce site. With Drupal 8, and the prowess of the team at Appnovation, this was never going to be a problem...
As part of a larger move to Demandware, Appnovation was tasked with rebuilding the Stories site - separate from the Demandware platform but integrating key ecommerce components into the experience to mesh content and commerce. The project itself required clear and open communication streams to manage the several parties: the new Demandware team, the previous Stories partner, the YETI business owners and the IT team.
Open, clear, and collaborative communication was key in order to manage all the moving parts - and because our team was aware of those moving parts, we were able to step in and problem solve issues as they arose. The YETI product manager said, he needed "a general contractor" to manage while they built - which empowered our team to go above and beyond the project deliverables.
An example of this occurred during Discovery. Our team revealed that the previous site framework would not support the new designs. Instead of what was thought to be a reskin, the site would need to be rearchitected and created from scratch.
Site environment issues significantly delayed the initial launch of the site.
Appnovation worked hand-in-hand with the Rackspace team to provision servers correctly with the new site's code/assets/database.
Ultimately, our research, design and Drupal 8 development team showed YETI the reasons as well of the benefits of this new architecture, launching to great success thereafter. Appnovation used and implemented our Drupal 8 expertise at every turn, improving on the earlier Drupal version, hosting on Rackspace, perfecting the online YETI experience.
Post-launch, the YETI site received significant traffic, and was well received overall. YETI also released several new Ambassador videos, a tribute to those fans who "redefine what it means to live a wild life", which added to the vibrancy of the new site.
Why Drupal was chosen
Drupal 8 was recommended, and accepted, as the most appropriate and usable open source technology, providing reliability and feature rich options for YETI's new site, with it's existing already using an earlier Drupal version, hosted on Rackspace. Appnovation's proven track record with Drupal 8 projects ensured that the project deliverables matched the desired outcome of the client, both in terms of technical functionality, ecommerce considerations, and on an aesthetic level.
Technical Specifications
Drupal version:
Key modules/theme/distribution used:
-Bulma (Responsive Framework) - Chosen because it is a lightweight responsive framework without the bloat of other popular frameworks (Bootstrap/Foundation)
-Paragraphs - Selected for ease of use to organize content on the site
-Focal Point - Leverages Crop API to use different image styles for a single image asset
