For clothing retailer Lager 157, it is important to put customers and distribution first through a smooth omnichannel experience. With the help of the Viskan E-commerce Platform, they have built an expansive e-commerce operation where customers get a seamless overall experience, while Lager 157 has gained a strong platform that has allowed them to expand into several new markets. Here, you can read more about how Lager 157 has used many of the features in the Viskan E-commerce Platform to support its growth and development, and how the close collaboration with Viskan has helped shape the platform to fit the needs of modern e-commerce businesses.

Background

Clothing retailer Lager 157 has grown quickly since it was founded in 1999 and is now a well-known brand with more than 60 stores across the Nordic countries and Germany. The company’s clear omnichannel strategy, with seamless sales across e-commerce and physical stores, has attracted customers, and Lager 157 is on a strong growth journey where volumes are increasing rapidly and the business is expanding into new markets. That places higher demands on what the e-commerce platform needs to handle.

Challenges

For Lager 157 to offer customers a frictionless shopping experience even as volumes grow, it needs a platform with high stability, delivery reliability and flexibility. It also needs support to make expansion into new markets straightforward.

Opportunities

Since the partnership began in 2015, Viskan and the Viskan E-commerce Platform, with its omnichannel features, have given Lager 157 strong support to expand freely and offer all customers a seamless shopping experience across multiple channels. The versatility of the platform has made it easier to launch stores and e-commerce in new countries. Lager 157 has a clear vision and, together with Viskan, has also been involved in developing features in the platform that give its e-commerce operation new momentum.

Solution

The Viskan E-commerce Platform gives Lager 157 the exceptional scalability and seamless integrations that high volumes demand. The platform’s automation capabilities mean minimal work is needed to manage the shop and orders. The ability to handle offers and presentation with creativity and simplicity makes it easier to meet customer expectations. The platform is also scalable from a staffing perspective, because the short learning curve makes it easy for new users to work in the platform. The platform’s stability and flexibility mean the business works from day one and every day after that, even during constant change, rising volumes and expansion into new markets. Thanks to the ongoing dialogue between Lager 157 and Viskan, the relationship has developed into a partnership where both sides work closely together to create new opportunities in a constantly changing market.

For Lager 157, e-commerce should put the customer and distribution first.

Since its start in Gällstad (the name comes from Route 157, which runs through the village where the company was founded), clothing retailer Lager 157 has done things its own way. The company has always stayed close to its customers and seen them as an important part of its community. For example, Lager 157 has chosen not to buy traditional external marketing and instead relies on word of mouth and its own channels such as email campaigns and social media. When the company launched e-commerce in 2010, the focus from the outset was a coordinated omnichannel offer. Lager 157 believes logistics are the main artery of the business, and that the frontend and the offer must be backed by strong logistics. The focus should always be on the customer, the offer and distribution. That fits well with the fact that Viskan has a wide range of backend functionality in its e-commerce platform.

As growth accelerated, the company needed an e-commerce platform it could continue to grow with and that could fully support its omnichannel strategy. Joachim Jerkersson, who is responsible for the company’s IT and warehouse & logistics, explains why they chose the Viskan E-commerce Platform:

”We chose Viskan because it was a locally established e-commerce platform that we felt we could keep building on. Above all from an omnichannel perspective that looks at the bigger picture in e-commerce, with the connection between the online side and the physical stores. Customers should be able to see whether the item they want to buy is available in a physical store, choose at checkout whether they want to collect their parcel in store, make returns in a physical store, and so on. We have a strong omnichannel mindset and always open a physical store alongside our e-commerce operation. That means we can use the stores as hubs in our omnichannel flow.”

To offer a customer-friendly and seamless omnichannel experience, Lager 157 uses features from Viskan Omnichannel. It gives e-commerce businesses a powerful way to connect their online store and physical stores into one joined-up, smooth overall solution.

Within Viskan Omnichannel, solutions such as Click & Collect, Pick & Pack, Returns and Shipment make it possible for customers to collect their online orders in store, see whether an item is available in store stock, make returns in store and also get fast local home deliveries directly from the store. That makes omnichannel a customer-adapted and cost-effective solution that also uses stores and store staff more efficiently.

A flexible e-commerce platform and omnichannel strategy drive Lager 157’s growth and expansion

Lager 157’s focus on an omnichannel experience where e-commerce and physical stores go hand in hand does more than improve the buying experience. It often increases sales too. When customers collect their deliveries in store, they get the chance to see and feel the rest of the product range, which often leads to additional purchases, both in store and online.

Viskan’s Online Growth team carried out a study across all Viskan customers using the platform’s omnichannel functionality. The aim was to understand how local e-commerce sales were affected when a physical store opened nearby. The study clearly shows that a newly opened physical store also has a positive impact on e-commerce. On average, local e-commerce sales increase by around 40%.

Lager 157’s concept has proven to be a winning strategy through the company’s strong growth. Since starting out in its home village of Gällstad, Lager 157 has expanded into Norway, Finland, Denmark and Germany. Sales have increased many times over, and order volumes continue to rise. Offering omnichannel and choosing to expose the brand through several owned channels has clearly worked well as a marketing approach.

That strong growth has, however, required a stable e-commerce platform behind it to ensure reliable delivery and a good customer experience, even as volumes increase. To scale and expand without friction, the e-commerce platform needs to be able to handle strong growth and the load that comes with it:

”Reliability and operational stability are absolute strengths of Viskan. We have zero downtime, and the platform helps our customers shop with us across multiple channels.” says Lager 157 CEO Stefan Palm.

Lager 157’s expansion also includes new markets. After establishing both e-commerce and physical stores across the Nordic countries, the company took its first step into the rest of Europe in 2024 with a store and e-commerce launch in Germany. It is an international expansion that will almost certainly continue and include more countries. Here, the Viskan E-commerce Platform and its strong adaptability have made it easier for Lager 157 to establish itself in new markets. For example, through Viskan PIM, which manages all product data in one place and includes built-in features for country-specific pricing, currencies, translations and more, making it easier to market products internationally without creating separate products for each market. Viskan CMS has also supported successful e-commerce across multiple markets thanks to easy translation into several languages for fast growth in new markets, and more than 100 unique components that can be customised both globally and individually.

Joachim Jerkersson highlights how this growth and expansion into other countries has been made possible by Viskan: ”The platform has helped us grow because it can handle the volumes as they increase. We’re growing fast and handling more and more transactions. We’re entering new markets, and every new market brings new requirements. It wouldn’t have worked if Viskan hadn’t adapted to our growth journey and supported it. We use a large part of their functionality, and today we also get support for membership functionality so our customers can become members and get customer pricing. We also use the customer service function in Viskan, where we receive and communicate with customers through the customer service interface in the platform.”

Lager 157 and the Viskan E-commerce Platform working together to develop the Viskan E-commerce Platform

Lager 157 and Viskan have carried out many projects together over the years. Today, the company uses Viskan for several of its concepts, such as the sportswear store 157 XCC. Lager 157 is also highly active in how it uses Viskan’s capabilities and functionality. For example, it uses Viskan CMS proactively by continuously testing new promos, updated copy and adjusted messaging.

That helps Lager 157 make quick changes and maintain a flexible offer, largely because Viskan CMS is an easy-to-use tool that does not require the user to be a developer in order to create strong design and compelling content for e-commerce.

Not least, Lager 157 is actively involved in developing the e-commerce platform so it supports the company’s vision and way of working:

”We use Viskan’s platform so extensively that we’ve been involved in developing functionality in the platform as we’ve worked together,” says Joachim Jerkersson. ”One of the advantages of having a supplier like Viskan and a platform we grow with is that we’ve been able to influence how the platform is built and designed. We’ve had strong joint development work and good growth together. We’ve been able to shift gears and push together in a way that’s necessary to keep developing and keeping up. That’s what’s needed for us as an e-commerce business to stay in the right place. Viskan is a good platform for us because it keeps pace with our growth and supports our growth. We have a strong teamwork together, and that’s what makes it successful.”

CEO Stefan Palm agrees that the challenge in today’s e-commerce is not having the most technical solutions, but having exactly what you need. In other words, each organisation should be able to hand-pick the right features and functionality and have a dialogue with the supplier about what really creates value for the business:

”For Lager 157, it’s about having the right applied tech solutions to deliver as much value as possible to customers. We do that through solutions with high delivery reliability that, above all, create value for us.”

Customer interview

Lager 157’s CEO, Stefan Palm, on their e-commerce journey.

Lager 157 started in 1999 in the small town of Gällstad in Västra Götaland. At the time, the company sold branded clothing at wallet-friendly prices. Since then, the business has grown to sell only its own brand across clothing, shoes and accessories. Lager 157 has been highly successful online and has opened as many as 79 stores (by 2024) in Sweden, Norway and Finland. Viskan has been Lager 157’s platform provider since 2015. We met the company’s founder and CEO, Stefan Palm, and asked a few questions about the business and its success.

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