Uniting Global Brands Under One CMS

• Headquarters: Heerenveen, the Netherlands
• Technology Stack: Algolia & Shopware

As one of the biggest bicycle and bike accessories groups worldwide, Accell Group wants to unite all its 20 brands under one CMS. Throughout the last 3 years, they have moved four brands from WordPress to Storyblok. Accell Group has successfully streamlined their content operations using Storyblok.

Coming from a monolithic setup to Storyblok

Before using Storyblok, Accell Group's brands were all managed in a monolithic architecture. The group wanted to find a better solution and use object-oriented UX for their website plans. Object-oriented UX uses schemas and components to organize different parts of a website for a streamlined design.

As the company expanded and included more brands, they recognized the necessity for a centralized management system. They identified some important needs, such as:

• Creating a multi-tree structure to manage content in different languages/locales
• Workflows for different brands to use internally on content, design, and development teams
• Clear user roles to organize and identify the spaces each brand and its editors would use
• A WYSIWYG editor for content editors
• An App directory that developers could easily choose applications from and experiment with
• The possibility to create large content releases for new product releases and campaigns
• Anchoring internal links that can be enabled in the schema configuration
• A headless setup that can accommodate plans to cater to omnichannel experiences

Migrating four brands to one CMS

Right from the start, the group chose to use Storyblok to build four new websites. This included the move for Raleigh (from Magento), Lapierre (from Drupal), XLC, and Sparta (from WordPress). Raleigh also changed their look two months after going live with Storyblok. The brand only had to update the design library with the new branding, fonts, and colors, with just one click. Storyblok was able to help Accell Group to:

• Easily scale across multiple brands on a B2C level
• Act as a robust system to handle best-of-breed integrations with Shopware (eCommerce) and Algolia (search and indexing)
• Achieve a simple migration for each brand with a straightforward onboarding process
• Use and consolidate a centralized design system and tokens, allowing each brand to adapt core components while being in sync in branding

Internationalization at Accell Group

Accell Group's internationalization setup involves hosting each brand's Space in different country folders. Each page's field type integrates with Storyblok's Dimensions application to support each language. Currently, Lapierre offers seven languages and Sparta three.

Internationalization was one of the first needs identified by Accell Group. This was a main necessity to grow and scale. In the future, the brand hopes to bring on more than 10 global brands to Storyblok.

Using Shopware with Storyblok

Accell Group’s setup does not involve a direct Shopware to Storyblok integration. However, they can show each brand’s products by linking products to external JSON files from Shopware as their product catalog. When a product is selected, additional product data added on Shopware is displayed on Storyblok's frontend along with all of its information through an API link.

Planning for the future

Moving forward, Accell Group hopes to explore omnichannel experiences for their brands. Accell Group is able to build new components that fit each brand's guidelines. With this, the group is able to bring intuitive customer-facing websites across multiple brands, countries and languages.