Serax

More than 30 years ago Serge and Axel Van Den Bossche founded the lifestyle brand Serax with a passionate family spirit. This unique brand has its roots in Belgium but has gained recognition worldwide by its craftmanship, even making appearances in renowned establishments like Nobu restaurants. Serax not only crafts exquisite tableware, cutlery, lighting, and accessories but also collaborates with acclaimed designers from around the globe like Ann Demeulemeester, Ottolenghi and Marni. As we began this journey, we wondered: how can we showcase these exceptional products in Shopify Plus while also giving credit to the talented designers behind them?

Serax looks for beauty every day, for the good things that make life worth living, the things that create a home that inspires happiness.
Axel Van Den Bossche – CEO at SERAX

Enhancing user experience and functionality

The first action point was finding solutions for improving the previous webshop. Creating an exceptional webshop in Shopify Plus presented Serax with a significant challenge: effectively showcasing its wide range of product types and designer collaborations. With this large amount of information to process, the key focus was to create a user-friendly concept that would make the search of desired products a breeze.

Our dedicated strategy and design team also initiated a pursuit to strike the perfect balance between inspiring visitors but also providing seamless e-commerce functionalities and the best possible user experience. The briefing was clear: the webshop should resemble a high-end catalog with integrated e-commerce features. For achieving this, our team proposed to demonstrate how various products could be combined to create stunning table settings through a ‘shop the look’ feature. Another thing we worked on was the possibility to see the complete collection of a specific designer rather than merely filtering on the type of product.

In addition, we took careful steps to seamlessly integrate the B2B webshop into the narrative. Serax’s important partnerships with designers, retailers, hospitality and architects were duly considered. Our focus throughout this process was to honor and maintain their existing sales channels. As a measure to maintain exclusivity, specific account login credentials are necessary for accessing and purchasing products.

Streamlining our efforts for Serax’s rebranding

Our dedicated team worked closely with Serax to achieve a user-friendly rebranding campaign. Radikal led the webshop development and
e-commerce strategy, while the in-house designers of Serax took care of the art direction. To ensure everyone was on the same page, we organized multiple interactive workshops to share ideas and expertise.

Motivated by the desire for improvement, we actively collaborated throughout the process. Bringing us a step closer to an engaging and memorable user experience for Serax. For seven months, we worked together to combine our design and e-commerce expertise. We regularly had meetings to discuss every step of the project. Serax’s dedication and input helped our team meet their expectations and work in a new and improved way.

Serax’s registry

After designing the new webshop, our developers could start working on the execution of different features. One of these features is the Registry List for Serax. It allows you to create an account for special occasions like weddings, wedding anniversaries, housewarmings or birthdays. Once you have created the list, you can easily share it with your email contacts, enabling them to purchase gifts for you. Our skilled designers and developers have built this tool from scratch, focusing on creating a logical step-by-step structure:

Login to your account.
Fill in the details of your list and add products
Your list is created and ready to be shared with friends and family

After creating the necessary pages, we connected the list to collections and integrated it with its own database. Thanks to the flexibility of the Shopify Plus platform, we were able to implement this function within a few weeks only.

Making product bundles

Another feature Serax wanted to implement was offering a variety of sets featuring different products. Whether you prefer to purchase entire sets or individual items, the choice is yours. To illustrate this, let’s take the example of the Inku dinnerware set, launched by Sergio Herman. This collection primarily includes plates, bowls, and mugs. You have the flexibility to buy as many items as you like, either separately or the entire set.

To enhance the shopping experience, our developers have introduced “virtual bundles” in Shopify Plus. These bundles allow you to centralize all the products. Since each set has a varying number of items, this feature enables you to customize the quantities according to your preferences.

Utilizing meta fields makes sorting and assigning the product information to the appropriate set effortless. Despite the large number of products involved, our developers approached this task with precision and meticulous attention to detail.

Implementing Algolia to sort sets and product items

Due to the extensive range of products offered by Serax, we required a tool that could seamlessly integrate with Shopify Plus to organize and categorize our product items and sets. It was crucial to maintain a consistent structure to ensure that products and sets remained correctly attributed to their respective designers. Randomly grouping products and sets would have a negative impact on the user experience, requiring more time and effort to locate desired items. Algolia proved to be the ideal solution, but our developers had to create a custom implementation to initiate the sorting process.

Introducing the new Serax webshop in Shopify Plus

The outcome is a clean and user-friendly solution that aligns perfectly with the rebranding instructions. We have successfully developed a platform that showcases the various collections, products, and bundles in a seamless manner. It brings us great pride to present the new Serax shop, accompanied by this case study, which sheds light on the journey behind this complex project. We not only appreciate the final result, but also want to acknowledge the exceptional level of cooperation throughout the process. The dedication demonstrated by Serax is truly admirable.