Helping an innovative US retailer grow

Ledbury specializes in luxury dress shirts, casual shirts and related accessories. It's an established US brand, featured in the Wall Street Journal article on men's obsession with dress shirts.

Ledbury's idea for manufacturing is to target small workshops located in the US. This enables them to make high-quality products.

"Uniform-volume product will be made abroad, and highly personal, customizable goods will be created domestically. Our customers can choose from a ready-to-wear shirt made in Turkey, a made-to-measure shirt made in Poland or a truly bespoke [custom designed] shirt made in Virginia."

Ledbury CEO told CNBC

Merging the past and modern shopping experience

Ledbury tech development is driven by dynamic and creative business processes driven by substantial marketing (advertising and promotions) that often leads to surges in traffic. The key to the success of this project was to act quickly and effectively.

Ledbury ran an impressive online store, which their in-house team built with the Spree Commerce open-source platform. However at times Ledbury's fast business growth required external software development reinforcements. When this happened, they usually turned to Netguru.

Recently Ledbury needed to add a crucial functionality really fast. The idea was to link their retail points of sale with the e-commerce system, so customers would be able to visit a local store, have measurements taken, ask a salesperson for advice, and then order any of the products online. This meant adding a completely new feature.

Ledbury was in need of experienced Ruby on Rails consultants and developers with in depth knowledge of open-source Spree Commerce solution

Scope of the project

• Adding functionality to an innovative business model
• Managing a complex open source implementation (Spree Commerce)
• Taking over the project and handing it back to Ledbury's development team withinin a short period of time.

Netguru adopted the working culture of Ledbury's development team that knows best how to work on their product. Engagement, experience and teamwork made it possible to meet the tight deadlines thanks to:

• engaging experienced Spree developers, which involved efficient communication and transparency;
• precise but flexible planning and adjusting the team size to business needs;
• efficient communication and transparency. We adopted the working culture of Ledbury's development team, who knew their product perfectly. We plugged into Ledbury’s Pivotal Tracker and used Slack for everyday communication;
• bulletproof quality assurance process. When delivering quality code in a short time, the role of QA specialists is as important as the role of programmers. There is simply no time for unnoticed errors.
  At Netguru, process testers are integral part of each (even the smallest) team. They use a unique Netguru checklist system and Rollbar error tracking software.

Results

• Opening new sales channels. Hiring Netguru team made it possible for Ledbury to build new functionality that merged the sales process in the online store with bricks-and-mortar outlets and added the feature of placing orders for merchandise at points of sale or by phone.
  Thanks to the new functionality, anyone can walk into a Ledbury’s store, consult a qualified salesman and order products online made to fit the customer’s precise measurements.
• Increasing overall revenue and expanding stores. The new Spree module played a role in Ledbury's dynamic growth. Ledbury expects to sell over 100,000 shirts in 2016 and plans to open stores in Richmond, Virginia, and Washington, D.C.
  Moreover the company acquired the second-oldest shirt workshop in the country - Richmond-based Creery Custom Shirt Makers that has been running for 100 years.
• Gaining access to a pool of developers for future development. Ledbury was able to double its team by hiring talented, experienced developers for a pre-defined period of time.
  Time used to introduce the Ledbury platform to Netguru developers was also an investment in a long-term partnership.