Django CMS E-commerce Website

Crafting a custom e-commerce platform for watch collectors

Disrupting the watch industry with the first crowd manufacturing venture for premium watches

Successful relaunch & growth

Following the MVP phase the platform was successfully validated, insights were collected. New, enhanced platform was successfully relaunched powering the next stage of the business growth.

Automated sales processes

Full sales processing automation was engineered, mirroring the crowd manufacturing workflows. This saves significant administrative effort & offers even a greater margin to the end user.

Powering collector’s community

Highly engaged and enthusiastic watch fans have now a new place to interact and engage with the current and upcoming projects. Strong community engagement before the watch exists is truly unprecedented in the watch industry.

overview

what. we did for Watchangels

From the inception of the crowd manufacturing idea of the Swiss watchmaking experts, our head of products Marcus Kuhn, has guided Watchangels team through the digitalisation of their complex offering.

The MVP platform that was built on a shoestring budget provided the essential growth in the first months of operation and helped the team validate the business concept.

The second iteration of the product was built on the strong foundations of the MVP development and scope, whilst adding more scalable and robust infrastructure to handle more users, projects and automate processes in the background. Today, Watchangels operate a fully automated crowd manufacturing platform with strong focus on community interaction and usability.

We’re proud to support this disruptive project that challenges the ‘status quo’ of the industry and levels the playing field for everyone involved in producing a designer timepiece. The custom e-commerce functionality built for Watchangels is wordclass and puts the company in the prime position to sell-out their future projects.

customer

Who is Watchangels?

Watchangels is a spin-off ventured launched by an independent, family owned, Swiss watch manufacturer since 1979. They produce watches in-house, under one roof and employ more than 200 passionate and skilled watchmakers, engineers, technicians, CNC operators, polishers, QC experts, after sales experts and logistics experts. The factory produces watches for luxury brands. Today, the skills and capabilities are offered in a crowd manufacturing model to support independent creators and brands.

More than 40 years of watchmaking experience, delivering watches to luxury Swiss brands
Innovative spin-off that disrupts the ‘status quo’ and supports independent creators & brands
All watches produced in-house in Switzerland under one roof

Challenges

Complex business and sales processes

Crowd manufacturing is a new concept and demanded a non-standard approach to business workflows.

Custom and tiered payment

Identifying user types and sales phases to offer different pricing, discounts and payment terms.

Scalability and flexibility

Customisation of all features that go beyond what the initial WordPress based platform could offer.

Goal

Our main target

Automate sales process and offer more scalability, remove technical barriers & improve user experience

Summary

How we did it

Leading the product workshops we created a concept for the enhanced Watchangels platform, including creation of user stories, technical architecture and design.
We led the initial website audit, choosing the right CMS and migration from WordPress to Django CMS, which was required to allow for all custom features that were required to mirror the complex sales process and edge cases.
Crafted and built a payment framework to handle various customer segments, pricing, discounts and tiers.
The new website design was created to provide a better user experience and a more visually appealing interface.

testimonials

what. clients say

“We have been manufacturing watches for years and we know our craft, but digital is where we needed help. With what. we found a digital partner who can offer business, technical and design leadership. They guide us through the product development process and together we are continuously iterating and implementing new features to build a first-class watch crowd manufacturing platform for our watch community.”

Guido Benedini

CEO