Magento

We chose Magento because it is a well-built and feature-rich system that will allow us to scale our business. It is the only platform on the market to come with out of the box solutions for multi-store strategy.

Thomas Hennequin, Jekyll & Hype

Can you tell us a bit about your company?

Hype Co. is a subsidiary of a century old French textile manufacturer, and our goal is to make our textile products available to the general public online. Our first project to launch is Jekyll & Hype, a site dedicated to French design in men's fashion, in particular men's sport shirts. This is the first of many e commerce sites the company plans to launch in 2009.

What technologies are currently implemented / integrated in the frontend and behind-the-scenes?

For the front end we integrated Flash modules on the homepage that allow us to enhance our product promotion. In the back end we added custom modules to help our management of prices and special offers.

Why did you choose Magento for the project?

We chose Magento because it is a well-built and feature-rich system that will allow us to scale our business. It is the only platform on the market to come with out of the box solutions for multi-store strategy. We plan to expand our online business so this was a feature we felt was crucial.

Magento was recommended to us by our partner Synolia, a French e commerce consultancy. We have great trust in Synolia's expertise in this field, so we knew their recommendation must be the best choice. We needed strong e commerce experts to help us launch our first site, and we found them in Magento and Synolia!

Can you talk about the scaling and performance challenges associated with the project (and how you overcame them)?

It was important to us to enhance our customers' shopping experience by having fast response time on our site. This was achieved by setting up the platform on dedicated servers and using accelerated caching such as APC.

Would you recommend enterprise companies use Magento?

Yes, Magento is great for ambitious projects because it offers so many features. The platform can provide a lot of value for companies with the willingness and resources to take full advantage of everything it has to offer.

What are your future plans with Magento and the site?

We plan to use Magento's multi-store functionality to launch 2 new stores by the end of 2009.
For Jekyll & Hype, we plan to migrate to the latest Magento version and integrate an iPhone optimized theme. We also plan to open to the English language market in the next few months.

Any recommendations for people evaluating Magento?

When selecting a platform make sure to consider your long terms needs. We want to be able to easily upgrade our site as newer Magento versions are released, so we chose not to modify Magento's standard architecture. Also, make sure to seek out expert partners who you can rely on for trusted advice.

Magento is such a robust platform that we recommend taking the time to understand all the possibilities and solutions it has to offer. Once you do, you can create really fantastic results!