D’Addario Restarts Online B2B Strategy

D’Addario has relaunched its global B2B ecommerce marketplace in conjunction with Chicago-based design and digital innovation consultancy, The Office of Experience (OX), systems architect Valtech and technology partner Episerver.

“We are honoured to work with such a storied brand like D’Addario to help them usher in a new level of service for their wholesale and B2B customers,” said Carlos Manalo, co-founder of OX. “This next-generation user experience and digital commerce solution will advance D’Addario’s technology stack and customer loyalty and satisfaction for years to come. It’s flexibility will ensure continual improvement and evolution as both customer and business needs change over time.”

The project originated from a corporate initiative at D’Addario to solidify its position in B2B musical instrument accessory sales online. “We had done a great job with building our own solution for B2B customers,” said D’Addario CEO Jim D’Addario. “But we were ready to take our offering to the next level to deliver a simple and streamlined ecommerce experience that would exceed our customers’ expectations and scale with them as their business expands.”

D’Addario turned to OX to help with the digital initiative and enable a team of best-in-breed partners that could successfully execute against the research, strategy and front-end user experience design developed by OX.

At the outset of the engagement, OX collaborated closely with D’Addario leadership and stakeholders to identify the most mission-critical key performance indicators (KPIs) that would define the success of a digitally enabled organization. This process of unyielding prioritization also determined which subset of business KPIs could be successfully influenced by the new B2B ecommerce platform.

OX performed extensive quantitative and qualitative research to uncover key user insights and business objectives to inform a new human-centered user experience design for D’Addario. By focusing on common tasks, customer profiles and performance metrics, OX used agile methodologies and structured sprints that combined design and development to build a best-in-class experience that helps customers achieve their goals and positions D’Addario as a trusted business partner rather than a product vendor.

Once the strategy, performance indicators and user research were underway, OX consulted with D’Addario to lead the partner search process, identifying best-in-breed partners to help execute the ambitious initiative. Valtech was chosen to collaborate on ecommerce technology strategy to architect the technical solution, systems integration and backend development, while Episerver was chosen as the technology platform for content, commerce and multi-channel marketing.

Together, the team facilitated D’Addario’s digital transformation and built a B2C-class offering based firmly on the brand’s core principles in order to exceed customer expectations, leapfrog the competition and sustain brand value well into the future.