Sound virtuosos are familiar with the name Sennheiser. Since 1945, the premium brand for headphones and soundbars has stood for the best sound quality in the mid- to upper-price segment. Today, the audio veteran is represented in all relevant global markets, with its headphone division now belonging to the Swiss Sonova Holding AG.
The company, based in Wedemark, Lower Saxony, is a classic wholesaler - Sennheiser generates almost 85% of its sales through the repurchase of its products. However, changing consumer behavior plays an immense role in the company’s strategic orientation: Dennis Wendt, Global Senior Director Digital Sales at Sonova Consumer Hearing, assumes the company will generate 75% of its sales through digital sales in the future.
As a global player, Sonova Consumer Hearing is fully committed to the support of Shopify Plus. The company also runs the shops of its focus markets with a flexible headless architecture.
Challenge
Sennheiser has been active in e-commerce since 2012. Its aim was to build up a direct sales channel and, in addition to wholesale, also act as a seller itself. Before switching to Shopify, the company relied on Digital River, which did its job but was very inflexible in terms of expandability.
Without the support of a partner company, Sennheiser could not make any changes to the monolithic template. Comparatively simple processes, such as the integration of new payment providers, often took several months. Opening up new markets was also possible with its original e-commerce system, but it was very time-consuming and expensive.
D2C is no longer just a nice-to-have, it’s a must-have. To be perceived as a premium brand, you need a direct sales channel in all relevant markets. With our old system, however, expansion was too time-consuming and cost-intensive.
Solution
Due to the circumstances, Sennheiser decided to switch to Shopify in 2018. The system was particularly impressive due to its simplicity and adaptability. In its 25 focus markets, Sennheiser uses a particularly flexible headless front end, while the background processes are administered via Shopify. The headless architecture can be adapted very well to customer requirements. As a result, the Wedemark-based company offers its customers an intuitive user experience. The Lower Saxony-based company serves the remaining markets with classic Shopify themes, which enables a particularly fast time to market.
E-commerce is an open-heart surgery. You’re selling 24/7, and you can’t really afford to be offline for even 24 hours.
Results
With Shopify, Sonova Consumer Hearing’s expansion process has accelerated enormously. Internally, the team can also decide in short periods of time whether and which new target markets should be developed. To go-live then takes place very quickly. For example, Sonova Consumer Hearing was able to gain a new target market as a sales region in just two months.
Since migrating to Shopify, Sonova Consumer Hearing has been able to make changes to the system on its own. The fact that the customer experience has improved noticeably is also shown by the interaction of customers with the shops: Thanks to an intuitive checkout, which is identical in almost all countries, the rate of shopping cart abandonment dropped noticeably.
In the future, social media and marketplaces will play an increasingly important role for Sonova Consumer Hearing. Thus, Shopify also acts as the linchpin of the company’s multichannel strategy: While Amazon and eBay are particularly relevant in the West, the Asian market is determined by completely different players. Shopify supports them all.The combination of an adaptable headless front end and headed themes for smaller markets gives Sennheiser the following advantages:
- Short time-to-market when opening up new target markets.
- Flexible headless front end that can quickly be expanded with new features as needed and provides the ideal user experience.
- Multichannel platform for connecting global marketplaces and social media channels.
Shopify’s innovative power in terms of new apps and interfaces is enormous. With the headless front end, we are very flexible, administration is carried out with minimal effort, and we are free to decide at any time if and when to tap into new countries.