Umbraco
Case Study

TCMM Shutter Group

Seamlessly transitioning from Kentico to Umbraco Commerce

Step into TCMM Shutter Group's success story with Umbraco Commerce at its core. Check out how Umbraco Commerce seamlessly integrated processes, making TCMM a trailblazer in the competitive UK and US shutters market - and witness the ease of use and efficiency of Umbraco Commerce in action 👇

About TCMM Shutter Group

TCMM Shutter Group, owned by Mzuri Group, sells interior plantation shutters for windows in the UK and beyond. There are several brands that sit within the group: Shutterly Fabulous, California Shutters, The Shutter Store, and DIY Shutters. The company has big ambitions – in trade, white-labelled, ‘self-Install’ or ‘measure and install’ – they aim to be the best and most competitive there is within the UK and US markets. 

The landscape for Shutters 

Post a Covid boom, when many homeowners invested in properties; growth has slowed, resulting in TCMM focusing their efforts on the positioning of their brands to capture as much of the possible market, as well as use their new technology platform to help make gains in conversion rates (and revenue). true have led the brand strategy on redefining TCMM’s brands as well as the re-platforming and building of each of TCMM Shutters’ brand websites. The first of which, California Shutters, went live summer ‘23. 

Why was Umbraco the right choice for TCMM? 

Although TCMM had previously used Kentico, there were compelling benefits to making the change across to Umbraco.   

✅ Using Umbraco 10, true were able to implement a custom approach to headless architecture. This meant that content was delivered from the CMS and converted to JSON, so that it could be consumed by a separate front-end. This helped to focus the performance of the front end and deliver complex UI, transitions, and visual identity all whilst performing well from a technical SEO perspective. 

✅ TCMM required multiple sites to be created with a strong focus on conversion and content. Umbraco was able to provide a platform that could match up to growth ambitions and handle the necessary performance for scaling, whilst not compromising components on the current sites that were performing well. 

Umbraco Commerce 

true is the first Umbraco partner to implement Umbraco Commerce as a solution that is live and in production. It has been implemented headlessly using the Umbraco Content Delivery API and the Umbraco Commerce Storefront API, which fits seamlessly into the project's architecture. It is one of the first website e-Commerce solutions to be delivered in this way.  

 

How does Commerce integrate with TCMM Shutters?

👉 The product’s lifecycle started initially as product options in a custom manufacturing portal system, a bespoke third-party system, that the client uses to deliver ‘product options’ to their various sites.  

👉 To build shutters, users have varying options to create a bespoke product to their requirements. The manufacturing portal works to combine compatible options across the various sites to create shutter solutions within their suite of commerce brands. 

👉 true import from the manufacturing portal, into Struct PIM, where the products are built as a ‘combination of options’. From this, pricing can be defined along with key information that goes into converting a shutter into a product. 

👉 Once the shutter solution is approved, it is imported into the Umbraco solution and converted into a product within Umbraco Commerce. At this stage, discounts, pricing promos, and delivery options can all be added, along with the commerce-specific tooling that makes buying a shutter a unique experience. 

👉 The Commerce process is based upon a composable architecture, meaning true select the right tool for each part of the process, utilizing the manufacturing portal, Struct PIM, Umbraco Commerce, and Umbraco CMS. 

The results of using Umbraco and Umbraco Commerce

✅ Structured flexibility and ease of use: the build works with components that can be used across multiple brands due to the customisable nature of the CMS. It allows for the order and look and feel of each component to be changed, and offers flexibility, alongside an accessible and intuitive back-end administration that is customisable, and conversion focussed. 

✅ More efficient marketing integration: the composable nature of Umbraco has reduced the effort and associated budgets to integrate marketing tools on the site; what previously could take days to implement on Kentico now takes hours with Umbraco.