Leinenmeister.de unites the traditional with the modern. Strunkmann & Meister, a well-established and traditional company, has been producing high-quality table linens and bed linens in Bielefeld, Germany for over 175 years. Until recently, they sold their products exclusively in their own retail shop and via selected business partners. But they now sell at www.leinenmeister.de as well. This website based on ePages was realized by nubizz, an implementation partner which also has a financial interest in the project.
Great effort was invested in the shop's graphic design so that the high-quality products can be presented appropriately. The shop's background can change when a different category is selected, for instance, to always ensure a suitable atmosphere for presenting any given product. Each category page features evocative, large-scale images. In addition, the images incorporate hotspots which allow website visitors to navigate categories. The merchant can maintain the large images and menu hotspots alike via the back office. The selection of different versions also blazes new trails. Instead of merely choosing a colour, customers can look at small preview images of product variants before deciding. This offers them not only an impression of the colour, but also the quality of the material. Some product images were created specifically for the online shop. This entailed nearly two months of hard work: photos had to be taken, followed by digital colouring and post-production. With as many as 60 colours for a single product, it was a complex endeavour.
Furthermore, nubizz decided to make fundamental adjustments to the handling and portrayal of the website's images due to the wide range of versions – particularly regarding bed linens. The reason was simple: in some instances, a single product at Leinenmeister.de is available in 400 different combinations of colour and size. Online images of terry-cloth linens and cloth handkerchiefs must also be appealing and large to clearly communicate their quality.
Social-commerce technologies such as Facebook's "Like" feature and standard ePages customer recommendations were incorporated to help integrate these technologies of increasing strategic importance.
Leinenmeister buys its merchandise from premium manufactures – typically based in Switzerland or Germany – such as Christian Fischbacher, Schlossberg, Graser, elegante and Brennet. All of them believe very strongly in product presentations and marketing which match the value of their products. And all of them are very satisfied with the results.
"We want to use our online shop to win over the German market", explains Marigret Strunkmann-Meister, Managing Director of Strunkmann & Meister. Leinenmeister.de will help the company pursue other goals, as well. "Preparations are already underway to localise the shop for additional markets. Our goals for 2011: Great Britain and the United States."
ePages Product: ePages Enterprise
Languages in store: Deutsch
Business Model: B2B and B2C
This Project was realized in cooperation with our partner "nubizz".