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Winning in a low-margin DIY market

jem & fix

When every visit counts: The jem & fix website has been transformed into a magnet that pulls customers to their physical stores, guides them directly to the products they seek, and ensures smiles and shopping carts full of goodies. Get the details behind the success here.

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<h1><span class="text-athletic-green">Winning</span> in a low-margin DIY market</h1> <p><span class="text-athletic-green">jem &amp; fix</span></p> <p>When every visit counts: The jem &amp; fix website has been transformed into a magnet that pulls customers to their physical stores, guides them directly to the products they seek, and ensures smiles and shopping carts full of goodies. Get the details behind the success here.</p>

Challenge

Get people to your store, when they could go anywhere else

Scandinavians love DIY. However, the DIY scene is as crowded as a summer festival. Margins are slim. Customer loyalty low. To gain market share, competitive edge and good profit margins, you must draw a straight line from business strategy and to customer experience. With +200 DIY stores across Scandinavia and a clear low-price and self-service concept, jem & fix needs a website that not only encourages people to visit their stores, but also enables customers to largely serve themselves.

Solution

Like having a personal DIY assistant at your fingertips

In 2023, we launched a new, lightning-fast website and scalable commerce solution. The core idea was simple: Make the jem & fix website not just a place to browse, but a gateway to in-store experiences. We’ve crafted a digital platform that both inspires, educates and guides. From the moment customers land on the site, they're on a clear path – straight to the right product on the right shelf in their nearest store. It's like having a personal DIY assistant at your fingertips, ensuring that every visit is efficient, enjoyable, and exactly what the customer needs.

No visits in vain: Real-time availability updates

“We aim for the gold standard. The specific product, it’s location in the store and real-time stock numbers must be visible in the auto-suggest search results, category pages and product page.” Those were the words from jem & fix.

Why? Because customers need assurance that the products are available, or they'll quickly go elsewhere.

Through APIs to their ERP (Aspect4), Encode product management system and Raptor recommendation engine, the frontend and elastic search swiftly show exactly where the products are found, how many are in stock at that exact moment, or if they are available only online.

A simplified check-out-flow completes the enhanced online and in-store customer experience.

“We live off our physical stores. Making it easy for customers to visit and extensively serve themselves is key to our omnichannel strategy. The new website plays a crucial role here.

In 3 years, we have reached index 200 across markets in terms of online visitors. We have +100 million sessions a year, and we know from previous data that a minimum of 50% of website visitors go to the store afterwards.“ 

Anna Paludan
Head of Marketing & E-commerce, jem & fix

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A website built for speed, peaks, high performance - and the future

At the busiest moments, the jem & fix website handles more than 1 million page views a day, processing up to 700 call requests per second for API calls, java scripts, pictures, content etc. That’s a significant and unpredictable load on the servers and website.

By transitioning to scalable cloud-based Azure services, server capacity is a thing of the past. No basement full of (too many) physical servers or paying too much for a server setup you only use a few days a year.

Diving deeper into the nuts and bolts, the digital cornerstone is a custom-coded Umbraco commerce solution, meticulously architected on a cloud-based microservice framework. Robust, scalable, flexible, cyber secure and user-centric.

Everything is tailored to jem & fix, securing a future where new sales channels, markets, services and back-office systems can be added, without disrupting existing operations.

  1. They are technically skilled, flexible and really nice people

    We’ve worked with Kraftvaerk since 2009. That says a lot. They are technically skilled, flexible and really nice people that help us drive our business forward and create results.

    Anna Paludan, Head of Marketing & E-commerce, jem & fix

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Cutting costs that erode profits

With a low-price, low-margin concept, it’s crucial to cut unnecessary costs that erode profits.

Automated product ordering, minimal warehousing, self-service instead of excessive staffing in stores, and an effective freight calculation engine are among the strategies jem & fix employs.

Especially the advanced freight calculator is doing wonders. By combining zip codes with item lists, weights, sizes, packaging and pallet sizes etc. we can calculate a competitive price without losing money. Moreover, jem & fix can now highlight remote areas on a map in each country where delivery is not available. The customer will know straight up before completing the purchase.

All in all, jem & fix is now equipped for a high-performing future.

“Our main KPI’s are driving traffic to the website, get people to choose their favorite local store, add products to their shopping list, and then visit the store to make their purchases. Online converting is secondary.”

Anna Paludan
Head of Marketing & E-commerce, jem & fix

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