Tamron Europe Customer Story

How Tamron Europe put the focus on a new customer-centric D2C eCommerce solution

If you're a photography aficionado, chances are you've heard of Tamron. As a Japan-based global manufacturer, Tamron offers world-class interchangeable camera lenses of multiple lengths for all types of cameras. The company operates by selling its lenses through distributors, local dealers and online platforms like Amazon. The European subsidiary of the Japanese manufacturer, Tamron Europe, manages marketing, sales, export, service and distribution from the European headquarters in Cologne, Germany.

Revenue

30 Million USD
Markets

36
Headquarters

Cologne, Germany
Industry

Manufacturing
Business Model

B2B, B2C, D2C
Worked with Partners
- Storyblok
- Vue Storefront
- Sendinblue
- Webmatch
- Algolia
- Adyen

months to integrate commercetools

increase in Google performance value

performance and accessibility score

The Challenge

How can we reach our customer base in the best possible way? This was the central question that Tamron Europe asked itself when conducting a comprehensive customer journey analysis in 2019. Previously, the lens manufacturer's website was only a source of information for end customers on Tamron lenses — purchases could only be made via other online retailers or local dealers. However, Tamron's customer journey analysis clearly showed that customers were increasingly visiting the manufacturer's website to purchase products.

These findings ultimately led to the decision by Tamron's management to integrate a complementary web shop into the website in order to better serve interested customers in the future.

The Solution

With the help of system integrator Webmatch, Tamron Europe built out its tech stack with all headless vendors so it could integrate the very best of best-of-breed components: Algolia for search and recommendation; Adyen for payments; Storyblok for the CMS; Sendinblue for email marketing; Vue Storefront as the frontend; and commercetools Composable Commerce for the backend. And with storytelling being a crucial part of the customer journey, Tamron Europe knew that Storyblok, Vue Storefront and commercetools could seamlessly merge content and commerce for photogenic results.

With so many exciting plans (going into new markets, adding new languages, etc.), the decision to go headless fits into Tamron Europe's strategy perfectly as the company upholds flexibility as a priority. Because a headless infrastructure decouples the frontend (the "head") from the backend, Tamron Europe can create and customize its eCommerce solution however it wants, now and in the future.

commercetools was the most advanced system that we looked at. What we've learned over the last 2.5 years is that you can't predict the future. And we wanted a system that can be modified and adapted to our systems in any way possible. If we had chosen a system that, let's say, wasn't as versatile as, say, commercetools, then we would have run the risk of having to work more on other parts if changes were needed in the future.

Sven Diegel

Marketing Manager at Tamron Europe

Why it was a success

With only a small team, Tamron Europe was able to implement commercetools as the backend provider in only two months. In fact, the implementation of Product Types in the Merchant Center took less than one week. And the results are already amazing: The website's Google performance value has increased by 54% and its Google Lighthouse scores, which measure performance and accessibility, are at 89%.

Tamron Europe has started rolling out its new eCommerce system in Germany and Austria. There is a further plan to launch in 16 other European countries in 18 languages (and maybe even more in the future). In these countries, the business is managed by distributors who will be able to also customize content for their specific markets in the frontend. For now, the company is looking forward to offering its customers another easy-to-use eCommerce sales channel in the future.