For the first time both the international and U.S. web operations of Redcats are now operating on the same internal e-commerce platform.
To create better economies of scale and operating efficiencies between its European and U.S. catalog and e-commerce operations, Redcats, No. 25 in the Internet Retailer Top 400 Guide to Retail Web Sites, spent much of the last year upgrading the technology of its internally developed and maintained e-commerce platform.
The new platform, which went live in Europe in May and in the U.S. in July, will help Redcats, an operating company of PPR Group, control technology expenses, share best practices and allow European and U.S. e-commerce managers to develop tighter synergies, says Eric Faintreny, chairman and CEO of Redcats USA.
The new platform runs on Microsoft .Net, which is Microsoft’s web services architecture. The .Net technology replaces an older proprietary infrastructure that was developed by a consulting company. The previous applications ran on older Microsoft technology and Microsoft’s Commerce Server platform.
With better technology, which includes a new e-catalog application from Scene7 Inc., Redcats will have the ability to offer customers faster search and faster page load times. The platform will also help Redcats implement a better affiliate management program and customer segmentation, Faintreny says.
The new site, which supports both Redcats USA and La Redoute, a French retailing unit of PPR, is built to support a heavy e-commerce load. Each day the platform handles 4.7 million page views from 418,000 visitors, the company says. “This new platform is a very cost efficient solution for the Redcats Group,” Faintreny says.
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