A world first for MACH architecture and composable commerce
March 2023
Brave Bison launches world-first composable commerce for UK's leading building supplies merchant, MKM, future proofing their tech stack and CX.
Founded nearly 30 years ago, with over 100 branches across the UK, MKM enlisted the expertise of Brave Bison Commerce to overhaul their existing tech stack. Bringing it into the new digital era, with an absolute focus on improving CX and delivering sustainable growth.
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It was time to tackle complexities
The future-ready platform features an intelligent, flexible product search function related to shoppers’ behaviour and hyper-personalisation that remembers users' preferences. This results in a tailored customer journey with curated product collections and targeted suggestions.
A far cry from MKM's legacy platform, which previously experienced navigation issues, slow page loads and a high cost of ownership. But challenges didn't stop there as they also had to manage tens of thousands of product SKUs, which lacked localised and personalised B2B, B2C and B2B2C shopper experiences across regions.
Thankfully, we embrace complexity
Work involved re-platforming the former MKM website to BigCommerce, building a stable, scalable, secure, and flexible platform which would deliver a first-class digital purchasing experience for new and existing MKM customers, with key focus on integration and supporting local stock and pricing.
The perfect MACH architecture for personalised composable commerce
The new headless architecture for the MKM website was built around four key components:
The BigCommerce Platform
The VueStorefront Front-end
The Bloomreach Suite
A Middleware Layer.
A world’s first in composable commerce.
Using a composable architecture of best of breed systems allowed MKM to move its operations to Cloud services without having to compromise on its unique business identity or having to limit its commercial offer and user experience. Making this project a success in migrating MKM to their new architecture, in less than a year.
Don't get left behind...
“MKM is proving its role as an industry leader with the launch of this new site, using digital innovation to provide buyers with an experience that’s as incredible online as it is in person. Bloomreach is proud to play a role in helping MKM create this experience with the integration of all three solutions in our Commerce Experience Cloud,” said Tjeerd Brenninkmeijer, EVP of EMEA, Bloomreach. “We worked alongside a number of great partners, including Brave Bison, in bringing this site to life, and we’re excited to see the results this collaborative effort will allow MKM to achieve.”
The results do the talking...
Although only launched in August 2022, the new platform has already driven promising results for the brand, with MKM already reporting:
16% uplift in year-on-year organic traffic
77% boost to time on page
26% uplift in online sales year-on-year.
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“To add to the complexity, halfway through the project the war in Ukraine broke out which is where some of the Brave Bison team were located. Nonetheless, the Brave Bison team showed real expertise in managing cross-team collaboration and multi-partner management despite ever-evolving requirements and constant integration challenges. Despite these ongoing complications and the complexity of our business model (where every branch has unique product selection and pricing), the Brave Bison team delivered a customer-first omnichannel solution on time and on budget.”
- Andy Pickup, Digital & Marketing Director at MKM
A unique offering that required a unique approach
“The MKM programme is a shining example of how great talent and great technology can combine with great ambition to deliver something truly ground-breaking and transformative,” said Ed Hornby, Managing Director of Brave Bison Commerce. “This year-long project overcame many complex challenges, including multiple integrations within a headless architecture, personalised omnichannel experiences for B2B and B2C and multi-tiered pricing and local fulfilment. We’re hugely proud that we delivered it on time with MKM and our partners, via multiple distributed teams from Bulgaria to Bali via Hull.”
But don't just take our word for it...
The results speak for themselves, check out our MKM Case Study to read more on how we made the complicated, simple and delivered a platform that is already driving sustainable growth.
Looking to modernise your business and improve the digital experience for your customers? Get future ready, drop us an email.
