No matter the industry, distance and hygiene regulations are making surviving the road ahead difficult for many local retailers. Yet online stores are profiting like never before: Amazon more than doubled its profits in the second quarter of 2020¹.
And it’s not just Amazon. Other brands are breaking records with their online sales. The iconic remote-controlled RC car brand Carrera experienced a significant increase in figures, with a large proportion of its sales generated via their online store.
Behind the scenes
Thankfully, Carerra’s online store is more than equipped to handle such an unexpected growth, being recently outfitted with the most modern system architecture: commercetools as the eCommerce platform in the backend, React Javascript library in the frontend, Kentico Xperience as the content management system hosted via byte5 on Microsoft Azure, and last but not least Findologic as the search engine. In addition to being able to handle Carrera’s recent growth online, all of these platforms in combination with one another are forecasted to significantly improve conversion rates and search performance. Well deserved: carrera-toys.com was awarded as Trend Shop 2021 by COMPUTER BILD in the area of leisure, games and hobbies. The technical quality was highlighted as excellent, the growth as outstanding.
Paying it forward
Even with their online success, Carrera still wants to show support for its brick-and-mortar dealers during the COVID-19 crisis – and they’ve done so by developing campaigns via their online store to bring customers back into physical stores. The “Starter Week” campaign, for example, offered starter sets at a special price. Carrera’s dealers only had to register to receive these attractive products. Plus, a map tool on the Carrera website made it even easier for Carrera enthusiasts to find partner stores. Buyers responded in a big way – the starter sets sold out in many places in no time. Carrera reacted immediately and made a large proportion of the goods from the online store available to specialist dealers for a sell-through.
We were very pleased with the positive response from the dealers. We were able to register numerous registrations for Starter Week. This is a great success and shows how well the linking of online and offline touchpoints can work when all partners pull together.”
Team Leader of Online Marketing & eCommerce, Carrera
Support for all Carrera fans
For Carrera, it is imperative that their customers have the best purchasing experience – and a lot of the time, they believe that comes from prospective buyers testing out their merchandise in-store. “The Carrera feeling can simply be best conveyed in specialist shops,” Januszewski explains.
The fans we gain in the store when they try a Carrera track for the first time are often fans we keep for life. If we want to cultivate our growing customer base, it is important to strengthen in-store retail. And in view of the current situation, it just feels right for us.
Team Leader of Online Marketing & eCommerce, Carrera
Carrera is also planning another campaign for their dealer network for Black Friday. And once again, their retailers – and customers – will benefit too: Social media ads for the campaign will be geo-tracked on Facebook and Instagram and also advertised via the Carrera newsletter. On the landing page for the campaign, there is a map tool where registered dealers can be found. The campaign has already gotten off to a roaring start, and participating specialist dealers can also look forward to attractive Carrera articles for the Christmas season.
With all of their initiatives to boost their retailers’ sales and enhance their customers’ shopping experience, Carrera is illustrating that the combination of online and offline trading has put them on the road to success.
Do you want to get into the driver’s seat yourself and learn more about the brand? Visit carrera-toys.com.
¹ Handelsblatt: Amazon benefits from corona crisis - and doubles quarterly profit [German] (Source)