Brompton ‘futureproofs business’ with new e-commerce site

Brompton has joined a growing group of cycling and outdoor brands, including Yeti Cycles, GoreWear, Mango Bikes, and Black Diamond Equipment, on the BigCommerce platform.

In sharing the news, the BigCommerce announcement points out that, after struggling for years with its previous e-commerce platform and tech stack, Brompton sought a new platform that offered “flexibility and the ability to scale” as the company grows and its priorities shift.

Key business factors that drove decision-making

Brompton wanted the flexibility to support storefronts in different markets as e-commerce expands rapidly beyond the UK.

Additional functionality – such as click-and-collect and improved analytics – are seen as key to increasing direct-to-consumer sales, which the company expects to comprise 50% of its business in the next few years.

Reaching that target – supporting and enabling a carefully considered purchase – requires in-depth understanding of the customer journey, and an ability to personalise it appropriately.

An evolving customer journey

The Brompton team points out that the modern bicycle purchasing journey includes both online and offline touches.

Customers shop around to compare different models, specifications, availability, and prices, but they also want to ride different models before making a buying decision.

As Oliver Boardman, IT and digital director at Brompton, comments: “The bike purchase is very omnichannel. We’ve recently launched a 28-day satisfaction guarantee in the UK and offer a bike hire programme where people can rent a bike and try it out for a while before deciding to buy one.

“With our new composable site, we know we’ll be able to add that to our current website and provide a seamless experience for our customers in the future. Our old system arguably could have been called composable, but it wasn’t purpose-built that way.

“The components didn’t work together well, and we didn’t have nearly as much flexibility as we needed. BigCommerce showed us that they could provide a true composable platform capable of scaling with us and our customers.”

Composable e-commerce: Integration and performance

With the new site built on BigCommerce Brompton is delivering what’s known as a “composable commerce site”.

Vue Storefront powers the front-end, while e-commerce experience provider Bloomreach serves as Brompton’s CMS, driving AI-powered personalisation across the site.

Search capabilities from Algolia sit on top of Brompton’s Cin7 inventory management system, which effectively functions as its ERP.

“Our previous system had a variety of pieces that didn’t work well together, so the idea of taking a composable commerce approach required careful assessment,” says Boardman.

“We took our time confirming the various components would work well, and knowing that BigCommerce was a member of the MACH Alliance gave us a lot of confidence. Knowing we were following the MACH blueprint and that the components were compatible was a huge factor, and BigCommerce and its partners all came to the table early in the process to identify potential barriers and explain how they would work together to do what we needed.”

As an Open SaaS e-commerce platform for fast-growing and established B2C and B2B brands, Brompton’s BigCommerce sites currently support sales in the UK and US, and the company plans to expand into additional European markets soon.

Mark Adams, senior vice president and general manager of EMEA at BigCommerce, said: “Brompton has delivered a best-in-class customer experience based on the foundations of a modern, composable technology stack that creates new opportunities for innovation and speed to market.

“This demonstrates that companies of any size and scale can benefit greatly from moving on from their legacy technology platforms, but what matters most is that Brompton is now empowered with the technology and tools to fire up the digital experience creating more inspiration, more loyalty and more value for their customers.”