Challenge

Thule is the world leader within Sports Utility Transportation, delivering transportation solutions for active families and outdoor enthusiasts wanting to transport their equipment by vehicles safely, easily and in style. The product portfolio comprises load carriers for cars such as rooftop boxes, roof rails and bike carriers. Additionally, the company offers snow chains, trailers, towing systems as well as accessories for motor homes and caravans. Thule has approximately 4,000 employees at over 30 production and sales locations in all major car markets in North America, Europe, Africa and Asia.

Goals for their new site included:

• Provide the end user a simplified, personalized Thule brand experience, across all regions and products.
• Increase revenue through online commerce, promotions and advertising initiatives.
• Reduce the number of procedures and people involved in maintaining and publishing information by streamlining our workflow processes and providing us with an overall business solution that fits the requirements for our different user groups.
• Handle translations as an automatic part of the publishing process.
• Create a structure for product, car and market specific data that will enable flexible use of the data across all medias.
• Use that data in an online FitGuide that guides our consumers/customers through the process of buying Thule products, allowing them to quickly and easily find products that fit their transportation needs, vehicle or current Thule products.

Hanson Dodge Creative (HDC), a Sitecore partner, guided Thule through a fairly lengthy selection process, and landed on Sitecore after evaluating several other content management solutions. HDC developed the site's strategy, design, branding and information architecture as well as leading the production of the video and lifestyle photography featured within the site.

Solution

With Sitecore as the CMS, HDC integrated multiple technologies, including Stibo for the PIM database, Shopatron for Ecommerce, Bing Maps for the Dealer Locator, RightNow for the CRM, Coveo Enterprise Search for site search, Sitecore’s Web Forms for Marketers for various site forms, Clay Tablet for translation services, Sitecore’s Staging Module for web farm publishing, and Sitecore’s SEO Module for optimization review and QA.

Result

Today the site is multilingual, with more than 30 languages that will soon be available. Data is centralized and complete, and the marriage of the Sitecore and PIM database is seamless.  They have met their goals, and the beautiful site design and extensive functionality have given Thule to a best-in-class site. The infrastructure of the site, based in Sitecore and STEP, give Thule the capability to quickly bring new products and brands onto the platform with minimal effort.

Technical Description

Solution Special Ingredients

• Stibo for the PIM database
• Shopatron for Ecommerce
• Bing Maps for the Dealer Locator
• RightNow for the CRM
• Coveo Enterprise Search for site search
• Sitecore’s Web Forms for Marketers for various site forms
• Clay Tablet for translation services
• Sitecore’s Staging Module for web farm publishing
• Sitecore’s SEO Module for optimization review and QA