Cascade Web Portfolio

Nordica Nsider Lounge

Summary

Nordica is an Italian ski manufacturer with an impeccable history of building alpine ski boots, a true Italian craft, much like Italian leather shoes. Nordica faced a difficult challenge when they decided to expand their product offering to downhill skis. Their history alone has solidified their place in the market as technical, functional, and performance based. Although skis are just as technically complex as ski boots, there is a great deal of culture and lifestyle that drives ski sales at the retail level.

With over 1700 dealer locations around the nation, Nordica needed to find a way to effectively communicate the technical features of their new ski product and create a cool culture experience for the most important influencer in their supply chain, retail store employees. In the ski business if the retail sales associate does not pull your brand off the wall for the customer, the opportunity for success is greatly decreased.

Nordica approached cascade looking for opportunities on the web. Cascade helped them realize the potential for communication efficiency and community building on the web. Key objectives of the project included:

1. Automate a national sales incentive program by tracking individual sales based on a points program.
2. Develop an online store where store employees could redeem points for product.
3. Create the Virtual Rep, an online training module based on Nordica’s current technical clinic.
4. Generate an online community using Web 2.0 technologies to build brand awareness and community around the new culture of Nordica.

Implementation

First, cascade designed a youthful look and feel that would accommodate a “lounge”/Web 2.0 environment. Second, we developed an easy to use interface for store employees to enter their sales history on a weekly basis. Users receive 1 point for selling a boot and 2 points for selling a ski. Traditionally, store employees would fax sales history sheets to the Nordica office where an admin would manually keep track. Now, sales history is stored on the web for each individual user along with their personal and store information. By automating this process and applying our evergreen Content and Data Management Platform, Nordica immediately saw a positive ROI.

Next, we developed the Virtual Rep, an online training module. With only 6 sales reps around the country, Nordica wanted to use the web to effectively communicate technical information that traditionally would be provided by the rep in a live clinic. Since we already developed the user profiles and the sales tracking function, we decided to link the sales clinic with the incentive program. After tracking each user through completion of the clinic and quiz we award them a point, redeemable in the shop.

Finally, we added the Nsider Lounge news section, streaming video and podcasting. With the use of the cascade’s evergreen Content Management System, adding news postings was simple and easy. We have used it as a blog type function.

Results

The Nsider Lounge program has been a huge success for Nordica’s marketing department. This website has given them an invaluable communication tool with the audience that will help their brand grow into a successful boot and ski company.

“The first year of the Nsider Lounge has been a huge success. This summer we are going to expand the program to include another key influencer group of ski area instructors.” Tyler Kipp, Nordica Marketing Coordinator

The Nsider Lounge has received recognition in the press for its revolutionary retail training tools combined with innovative web tools. Internet Retailer, a national publication on Strategies for Multi-Channel Retailing, did a feature article on the Nsider Lounge in their November 2006 issue.

Click here to read the full article.