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Crate & Barrel

Project Overview

Departments

Product Strategy
Product Management
Product Design
Engineering

platforms

iOS App
Web

duration

Initial Development:
13 months

Partner
Product Strategy
Product Management
Product Design
Software Development
Solutions & Features
Results & KPIs

Partner

The iconic furniture retailer is putting digital transformation at the forefront to create a more seamless and intuitive customer experience.

Known for high-quality home furnishings since 1962, parent company Crate & Barrel Holdings Inc. (CBH) oversees lifestyle brands Crate & Barrel, CB2, Crate & Kids, and Hudson Grace. Operating more than 100 stores in the U.S. and Canada with franchise locations in nine countries, more than 200 million customers visit the company's stores and websites each year.

Crate & Barrel is an iconic brand name and a leader in its industry — but in a highly competitive space like home decor, staying ahead of the curve is crucial for continued success. To stay on top of their game, it was key that CBH become more agile so they could move faster than the competition when it came to using technology to provide an outstanding customer-facing experience. That's where Heady came in.

Product Strategy

Problem Statement

CBH operates several unique brands, each with its own identity. Looking toward an elevated new build for the Crate & Barrel mobile app and the debut of sister brand CB2’s very first mobile app, they sought a technology solution that could support each brand's individuality while keeping the overall system streamlined and manageable.

Partner

With more than 1,100 stores mostly located in small to mid-sized markets, the Birmingham, Alabama-based brand does a brisk business catering to small town sneakerheads with an insatiable thirst for the newest releases and hottest colorways.

Founded in 1945, Hibbett is one of the oldest names in sporting goods and has evolved from a family-owned brick-and-mortar retailer to a publicly traded company with more than $1 billion in annual revenue.

Challenges &
Opportunities

Following several months of discovery to understand CBH’s business goals and challenges, together we decided on a shared SDK (software development kit) strategy for the Crate & Barrel and CB2 mobile apps.

This proven approach for building apps for multi-brand companies would allow us to maintain distinct brand identities and functionalities for each app while ensuring a streamlined, unified backend, saving significant time and development costs without sacrificing the individuality of each brand. This approach would also facilitate the rapid introduction of new mobile apps for additional brands in the future.

Benefits of the SDK Approach:

Reduced Development Time & Costs

Allows for the rapid assembly of mobile app functionalities, significantly cutting down development time and associated costs.

Ease of Brand Customization

Enables easy customization, ensuring that each app maintains its distinct brand look and feel while sharing a common technology base.

Streamlined Updates & Maintenance

Changes to core components can be rolled out across multiple apps simultaneously, simplifying updates and maintenance.

Quick Adaptation to New Features

Facilitates the quick integration of new features across all brand apps, keeping them up-to-date with the latest tech advancements.

Consistent Quality & Performance

Helps maintain a consistent level of performance and quality across all apps, enhancing user experience.

Learn more about our proven formula for building mobile apps for multi-brand companies with reduced costs and faster launches.

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Product Management

Collaboration

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Full collaboration and transparency were essential for each step and decision made during the app development timeline.

Our integration with CBH's robust in-house tech team was seamless, dividing responsibilities to best leverage our respective strengths. Heady fully managed and led the development of the shopping side of the app, including product pages and barcode scanning functionalities, bringing our specialized expertise to the forefront. The registry side of the project was managed by the CBH team, with Heady filling in gaps as challenges arose. Working as a tightly integrated team with strong communication across the board ensured that project deadlines were met and the final product exceeded expectations.

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COLLABORATION TOUCHPOINTS

Shared Slack Channels

Project stakeholder channel
Development communication channel
Design communication channel
AMS communication channel
Automated build alert channel

Cross-Team Development Agile Ceremonies

Daily standups
Team-specific and feature-specific daily and weekly syncs
Sprint Planning shared across development teams
Shared Retrospectives with client-side development leads
Collaborative problem-solving and feature planning

Cross-Team Project Management & Documentation

Shared Confluence project documentation for product and technical requirements
Collaborative documentation for middleware approach, front-end requirements, and user stories
Shared JIRA board, backlog, and sprints
Shared Google Drive space for additional documentation

Design Collaboration

Designers worked entirely within client’s Figma space for ease of sharing and review
Shared Visual QA on feature tickets with the internal CBH design team

Development Practices

Cross-team code reviews with external feedback to maintain coding standards
Shared enforcement and ownership of development standards
Cross-feature code reviews and QA across all tickets, integrating with client's QA teams

ProjectManagement

Weekly App Team stakeholder meetings for high-level project updates
Participation in Crate & Barrel quarterly planning meetings

The Heady Difference

We work so closely with our clients that we feel like part of the internal team.

Our collaboration with Crate & Barrel exemplifies our commitment to being more than just a service provider; we integrate so seamlessly with our client teams that we feel like an internal part of their operations. This project showcased our ability to lead with deep expertise while seamlessly collaborating with Crate & Barrel's robust tech and design teams.

At Heady we build dedicated teams and tailor them to align closely with our clients’ internal cultures and workflows, ensuring that together our efforts create the best digital products possible.

Heady was a great partner to work with, top to bottom. The team treated the work as though they were a part of our company — our success was their success.”

Bryan Samolinski
Senior Manager of Development, Crate & Barrel

Product Design

When it came to design, our multidisciplinary design team truly operated like an in-house team for CBH.

With the creative direction for both apps already in place and core screens already designed, the Heady team played a hyper-collaborative supporting role to ensure the shared SDK approach could be successfully executed.

Design System

A crucial component of our strategy for more quickly building two distinct yet functionally similar mobile apps was the implementation of Design Systems.

What is a design system? Learn more about how they eliminate redundancy and streamline workflows.

Learn More

We reverse-engineered a Design System for the Crate & Barrel app by refining an existing but incomplete system, incorporating both new designs and elements from the existing app. Initially, the focus was on building the CB2 Design System, starting by adapting the preliminary Crate & Barrel Design System. We first cleaned up and completed the Crate & Barrel system, establishing foundational elements like text and color styles, and then applied these to create the CB2 system. This approach not only streamlined the design process but also ensured consistency and minimized complexity for the engineering team.

CBH tapped Heady to take the lead on this initiative due to our Design System expertise. Our collaboration involved closely working with CBH’s design team, ensuring alignment with each brand's unique attributes and design guidelines. We didn't introduce new design rules but enhanced the cohesiveness of existing ones, allowing the mobile apps to integrate seamlessly with the overall brand identity. This collaboration exemplifies our ability to work with an iconic brand's existing guidelines and evolve them to create designs for new channels and platforms.

Built and delivered in Figma, with extensive Notion documentation for ease of use, both Design Systems now serve as dynamic resources for CBH. Our handoff process included a comprehensive two-hour workshop designed to familiarize the CBH design team with the system’s functionality. This training session was crucial for empowering them to effectively navigate and utilize the design system and its components, ensuring they could maintain and evolve them moving forward.

Design Specializations

Iconography

Icons serve as key navigational tools within both the Crate & Barrel and CB2 apps, allowing users to easily and instantly access their account or navigate to the registry. For both apps, we set up distinctive icon sets that captured the unique essence of each brand. Icons were surgically cleaned up by our design team, ensuring they adhere to Apple's HIG and reflecting the meticulous attention to detail needed to create a premium shopping experience.

Design QA

Our extensive design QA process was pivotal in maintaining brand standards across every screen of both apps. Initially starting with Crate & Barrel, we moved to CB2, and then circled back to refine the Crate design file, ensuring all shared components were utilized and the design system was complete. This iterative approach allowed us to effectively "flip a switch," translating the Crate & Barrel app build into the CB2 app with precise branding adjustments. During this process, we meticulously compared app screens against our Figma designs, correcting any discrepancies in alignment, color, or spacing to ensure a consistent and accurate brand experience across the platforms.

Development

Backend & Frontend POV

When it came time to build the Crate & Barrel and CB2 apps, we embarked on a focused effort to seamlessly merge backend functionalities with a more intuitive frontend experience.

BFF (Backend for Frontend)

To facilitate this we developed a middleware solution, termed BFF (backend for frontend), to translate and organize the client’s backend APIs effectively. This middleware was instrumental for both apps, ensuring efficient data utilization with minimal updates needed for brand-specific adjustments.

Frontend

On the frontend, our objective was to address and rectify the limitations of the existing Crate app including lack of modularity, code duplication, and architectural inconsistencies. Our solution: segmenting the apps into smaller, functional modules through an SDK. This strategy not only enhanced flexibility and modularity but also enabled us to launch multiple brands more swiftly.

Technical Challenges

The evolution of the Crate platform was guided by a vision to not only refine the digital experiences of Crate & Barrel and CB2, but also to lay a robust foundation for future brand integrations through our custom SDK approach.

A key part of realizing this vision was developing a versatile e-commerce ecosystem, dubbed BrowsePath, that encompasses browsing, searching, and shopping functionalities, alongside customizable furniture orders and personalized favorite lists. Meanwhile, the RegistryPath feature was designed to cater to gift registry needs for events like weddings, baby showers, and beyond, enhancing user engagement and satisfaction.

Bringing this to life meant navigating plenty of backend hurdles, particularly when it came to data integration from Crate’s legacy and modern data systems. The frontend faced its own set of challenges, with the need for a modular architecture to reduce redundancy and promote maintainability without sacrificing user experience.

Technical Solutions

In developing the mobile apps for Crate & Barrel and CB2, our approach was guided by the Backend for Frontend (BFF) strategy, which tailors server-side components to the unique needs of each client application. This allowed us to create optimized, user-specific APIs that enhance user experience by improving load times and ensuring data relevance.

Complementing this strategy, we integrated Malible, our proprietary SaaS platform that combines a headless CMS with robust tools to simplify the management of mobile apps and other frontend applications. By using a headless CMS, we could separate content storage from its presentation, allowing for greater flexibility across different platforms. This system worked in tandem with our SDK to customize the look and feel of the Crate & Barrel and CB2 apps according to their unique brand identities, reducing development efforts while creating a more cohesive user experience across both apps.

Tech Stack

Our team harnessed the latest iOS technologies to ensure high performance and flexibility. This focused technology stack enabled us to deliver highly responsive and adaptable mobile apps for Crate & Barrel and CB2.

SwiftUI & Combine

Adopted for advanced data handling and dynamic UIs, marking a significant leap in our development approach by fostering efficient, responsive app designs.

Swift Packages

Chosen over Cocoapods for integrating third-party dependencies, this move streamlined our development process and allowed us to keep our code as in-house as possible.

Apple Foundation APIs

Heavily utilized to meet the client's preference for in-house development, allowing for customized feature development and greater control over app capabilities.

QA & Testing

Ensuring the reliability and performance of the Crate & Barrel and CB2 mobile apps was paramount to the project’s success.

Backend Testing

Utilized Playwright for API test cases, ensuring backend integrity

Frontend Testing

Employed XCTests for UI testing on the mobile platform, verifying user interface quality

Solutions & Features

Each sporting a unique look and feel true to their respective brands, the new-and-improved Crate & Barrel app and first-ever CB2 app share a multitude of features that enhance the user experience:

Heady Benefits & Perks

Filter & Sort

The Crate & Barrel and CB2 apps now feature advanced filter and sort capabilities that allow users to narrow down search results by various criteria such as price, color, material and size. This is a significant enhancement over the previous version of the Crate & Barrel app, where users could only view a static list of results.

Universal Registry Management

An important part of this project was laying the groundwork for the creation of a universal registry system. Previously users had to maintain separate registries for Crate and CB2. Now, users can combine items from both Crate & Barrel and CB2 into a single registry, accessing it and updating it from either brand’s app or website for a better user experience.

Quick Actions on Product Listing Pages

In any Product Listing Page (PLP), users can now perform quick actions. For users with a registry, tapping the plus sign on a product image adds the item directly. For others, the same action adds the item to their Favorites, facilitating easier planning of future purchases.

Improved Barcode Search

The barcode search functionality has been improved, allowing in-store shoppers to quickly bring up product information and add items to their cart, registry, or favorites. Offered in both the Crate & Barrel and CB2 apps, this feature is particularly useful during in-store registry events, with enhanced error handling and a redesigned search results page to boost the shopping experience.

Enhanced Product Description Pages

Product Description Pages (PDPs) were overhauled to provide a more user-friendly experience. They now uniformly present key information like product dimensions and make it easier to browse customer reviews and shop for related products, enhancing the customer's ability to make informed purchasing decisions.

Results & KPIs

Launched in January 2024, Crate & Barrel Holdings now has a pair of top-rated e-commerce apps for its Crate & Barrel and CB2 brands.

CB2 customers can now shop their favorite home decor brand via mobile app for the first time, while loyal Crate & Barrel customers enjoy an upgraded shopping experience. Each app reflects the distinctive look of its respective brand while sharing common functionalities, such as allowing users to see items within their space using augmented reality and to create a universal gift registry with items from both brands.

Total downloads for both apps are significantly higher than we planned. Feedback captured from users has been overwhelmingly positive.”

Bryan Samolinski
Senior Manager of Development, Crate & Barrel

We’re proud to share that just three months after launch, the Crate & Barrel app won a 2024 Webby Award in the Apps & Software - Shopping & Retail category. ↓

RECENT FEATURE RELEASE HIGHLIGHT

Profile Achievements

In January 2023 we launched “Profile Achievements”, a dynamic app feature designed to enhance user engagement. Now, members can easily track their progress with detailed statistics such as the number of completed classes and badges earned for completing various programs. This feature also celebrates member milestones like length of membership and total classes completed. These achievements are prominently displayed in the member's profile, laying the groundwork for a more personalized identity within the app. This feature not only motivates continued use of the platform but also paves the way for future community-based enhancements, where members can share and celebrate their achievements with others on the platform.

Crate&Barrel

🚀

Post-Launch & Beyond

Throughout the project, our team sought to ensure we set CBH up for continued success after the Crate & Barrel and CB2 apps launched successfully and our engagement came to an end.

During the QA and user acceptance testing phases, we prioritized actionable feedback that would guide future launches and organized their product roadmap into high-priority fixes for the short-term and lower-priority issues for the long-term. This proactive approach ensured a smooth transition post-engagement, enabling their internal teams to effectively manage and iterate on the apps going forward.

Building on the trust and rapport established during this project, we've embarked on another exciting venture with CBH, aiming to further enhance operational efficiencies and strengthen the customer-brand relationship by leveraging native iOS apps. This ongoing collaboration underscores our commitment to long-term partnerships, supporting our clients’ success well beyond the initial launch.

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We help brands like Crate & Barrel achieve their digital transformation goals with award-winning mobile apps (and so much more).

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Crate & Barrel | CB2

Project Overview

Departments

platforms

duration

Partner

Partner

The iconic furniture retailer is putting digital transformation at the forefront to create a more seamless and intuitive customer experience.

Product Strategy

Problem Statement

Partner

With more than 1,100 stores mostly located in small to mid-sized markets, the Birmingham, Alabama-based brand does a brisk business catering to small town sneakerheads with an insatiable thirst for the newest releases and hottest colorways.

Challenges & Opportunities

Following several months of discovery to understand CBH’s business goals and challenges, together we decided on a shared SDK (software development kit) strategy for the Crate & Barrel and CB2 mobile apps.

Benefits of the SDK Approach:

Product Management

Collaboration

Full collaboration and transparency were essential for each step and decision made during the app development timeline.

COLLABORATION TOUCHPOINTS

Shared Slack Channels

Cross-Team Development Agile Ceremonies

Cross-Team Project Management & Documentation

Design Collaboration

Development Practices

ProjectManagement

The Heady Difference

We work so closely with our clients that we feel like part of the internal team.

Product Design

When it came to design, our multidisciplinary design team truly operated like an in-house team for CBH.

Design System

A crucial component of our strategy for more quickly building two distinct yet functionally similar mobile apps was the implementation of Design Systems.

Design Specializations

Iconography

Design QA

Development

Backend & Frontend POV

When it came time to build the Crate & Barrel and CB2 apps, we embarked on a focused effort to seamlessly merge backend functionalities with a more intuitive frontend experience.

BFF (Backend for Frontend)

Frontend

Technical Challenges

The evolution of the Crate platform was guided by a vision to not only refine the digital experiences of Crate & Barrel and CB2, but also to lay a robust foundation for future brand integrations through our custom SDK approach.

Technical Solutions

Other key solutions included:

Augmented Reality (AR) Functionality

Modular Frameworks for Browse & Registry Flows

Enhanced Custom Fabric Options

Security Measures

Tech Stack

Our team harnessed the latest iOS technologies to ensure high performance and flexibility. This focused technology stack enabled us to deliver highly responsive and adaptable mobile apps for Crate & Barrel and CB2.

SwiftUI & Combine

Swift Packages

Apple Foundation APIs

QA & Testing

Ensuring the reliability and performance of the Crate & Barrel and CB2 mobile apps was paramount to the project’s success.

Backend Testing

Frontend Testing

Solutions & Features

Each sporting a unique look and feel true to their respective brands, the new-and-improved Crate & Barrel app and first-ever CB2 app share a multitude of features that enhance the user experience:

Heady Benefits & Perks

Filter & Sort

Universal Registry Management

Quick Actions on Product Listing Pages

Improved Barcode Search

Enhanced Product Description Pages

Results & KPIs

Launched in January 2024, Crate & Barrel Holdings now has a pair of top-rated e-commerce apps for its Crate & Barrel and CB2 brands.

We’re proud to share that just three months after launch, the Crate & Barrel app won a 2024 Webby Award in the Apps & Software - Shopping & Retail category. ↓

RECENT FEATURE RELEASE HIGHLIGHT

Crate&Barrel

🚀

Post-Launch & Beyond

Throughout the project, our team sought to ensure we set CBH up for continued success after the Crate & Barrel and CB2 apps launched successfully and our engagement came to an end.

Need an expert mobile app partner in your corner?

We help brands like Crate & Barrel achieve their digital transformation goals with award-winning mobile apps (and so much more).

LET'S TALK IT OUT.

Figuring out your next step? We're here for you.

Or drop us a line.

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