1. 1hello@fluid.com
Wolverine Worldwide, Inc. is one of the world’s
largest marketers of branded footwear, apparel
and accessories, with a global portfolio of 15
brands including household names like Keds, Sperry,
Hush Puppies, Chaco and others. With $2.7 billion
in revenue in fiscal 20141
, the company needed to
create unique, robust and scalable eCommerce
experiences for its consumers that could set
Wolverine apart from and help it grow faster than
the competition.
“We realized that we had different code bases
and web platforms for each individual organization
within our portfolio, and that wasn’t a scalable or
sustainable approach to our business,” said Adrian
Stevens, VP of Global eCommerce at Wolverine
Brands. “At the same time, our CEO wanted to
shift Wolverine’s mindset from being a wholesaler
to working much more closely with our customers.
As close as we are with our retailers, nobody gets
our customers better than we do, and we wanted
to create a more personalized direct-to-consumer
experience across our portfolio of brands.”
To achieve these goals, Wolverine embarked on an
18-month journey to update and replatform all of
their global digital properties on the Demandware
Commerce Cloud, while simultaneously offering
customizable products across several of their key
brands. By transitioning to Demandware and basing
all of their customization experiences on Fluid’s
Configure 3.0 software, Wolverine built the framework
for scalable, rapidly replicable direct-to-consumer
eCommerce businesses that could support the needs
of a diverse portfolio of global brands.
“For Wolverine, it was all about stability and scale.
In late 2013 they had 16 brands that they needed to
launch online within two years, and many of these
needed global transactional capability,” said Matt
Hart, customer success director at Demandware.
“Wolverine accelerated their implementation with
Demandware by making some great foundational
decisions that enabled them to launch individually but
segment in a way that was really efficient.”
So efficient, in fact, that within 18 months Wolverine
replatformed their entire brand portfolio to
Demandware, including more than 70 websites
and 40 mobile sites across 13 countries and five
currencies. However, this achievement was only part
of the story. While individual brands in their lineup
had experimented with custom product offerings in
the past, the replatforming empowered Wolverine to
scale these experiences to multiple brands which will
drive Wolverine’s direct-to-consumer business and
form the foundation of their business going forward.
“One of the big trends is that more and more
consumers want to be recognized and catered to
as individuals, and that’s where customization plays
a critical role, and why we partnered with Fluid,”
said Stevens. “We wanted a partner with deep
experience, and the fact that Fluid has a portfolio
across the retail landscape was very interesting to
us. That, coupled with Fluid’s design capabilities and
their cutting edge technologies in some of the most
exciting elements in customization, made it a
great partnership.”
Wolverine views customization as a way to bring
additional eCommerce business back in house,
as they alone possess the production and design
capacities for custom products, as well as a unique
understanding their customers. Scalability, and the
ability to leverage customization across all its brands
again played a role. While all of its customization
experiences leverage Configure 3.0 software as their
base platform, each maintains the unique flavor and
“feel” of their individual brands.
“Having solid technology behind our customization
offerings was essential; we needed a platform to
create compelling, fantastic experiences on both
desktop and mobile that reflected each brand’s DNA
Customization, Demandware Commerce, and
the Future of Wolverine Brands
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CASE STUDY

2. 2hello@fluid.com
while also being easily scalable to the other brands in our
portfolio,” said Adrian Stevens, VP of Global eCommerce
at Wolverine Brands, the parent company of Chaco. “In
the end, it’s all about giving people a reason to shop
our sites. Offering unique, compelling experiences like
customization is essential for brand survival in today’s
market, and it’s so critical to have synergy between the
brand’s story and the eCommerce experience.”
Within the Wolverine portfolio, Chaco holds the
distinction of not only being the first to go live with
custom products, but also being the first to launch
both their Demandware replatform and customization
experiences simultaneously.
Called MyChaco, Chaco’s customization platform lets
users choose from five base styles for their sandals
and then personalize nine different dimensions of color,
material and sole choices. Once the user is happy with
their design, the customized sandals are made in the
USA at the Chaco factory in Rockford, Michigan, and
shipped for free within 8 days. The platform is available
on both desktop and mobile devices, and as customers
play with the different elements they watch their design
come to life in real time, visualized in photorealistic
quality with 3D texture mapping.
MyChaco launched in September 2015, following which
Wolverine unveiled customization capability with Keds
and Sperry.
“Custom elements are driving between 20-30 percent of
eCommerce revenue for the brands that offer them, and
since transitioning to the Fluid platform we’ve seen a year-
over-year increase that we’re very happy about,” Stevens
revealed. “Custom is part of a portfolio of activities we’re
offering to answer the question of why someone shop our
sites as opposed to a retailer; the key is that you’ve got
to make it easy and interesting to shop.”
Sperry’s customization centers on their iconic Top-Sider
boat shoe, in keeping with the brand’s heritage of all
things sea and water (they even offer a Shark Tattoo
as a customization option!) Keds, on the other hand,
focuses on their deep personal connection to their
customers, which they have since deepened by unveiling
the Keds Custom Studio, a tool that turns Keds’ fans
into designers who can create and personalize their own
shoes. Keds’ customization platform went live in December
2015, following a limited beta test with some of their most
loyal customers, which generated rave reviews.
“We were very focused on weaving the feel of the Keds
brand into our customization experience, making the
customer truly feel like they’re a designer and an integral
part of the creative design experience,” said Emily Culp,
chief marketing officer at Keds. “Keds is about female
empowerment and supporting generations of strong women
who are in charge of their own destiny, and in that spirit
we’re handing over the design reigns to our fans and
offering custom products, which creates something within
our brand that resonates with that mission.”
Customization now plays a key role in Wolverines’
roadmap. They plan to bring customization omnichannel
beginning with an in-store offering from Sperry, and
Wolverine hopes to use customization as a learning
laboratory to generate real time customer preference
feedback that can be used to inform their standard
production line.
“Customization creates a unique opportunity to establish a
conversation with your customers, so my hope is that our
custom offerings can be used as a “test vehicle” to learn
our customer’s preferences and inform even our mainline
products,” said Stevens. “By offering custom, instead of
saying ‘here is what we have for you,’ you can now ask
‘what would you like,’ and if we as an organization can
listen to our customers who are voting with their wallets,
there is huge potential there.”