PixelMEDIA Inc.

In mid-July, two hockey sticks showed up on the desk of designer Onur Orhon. These weren’t the ordinary sticks you’d see at a sporting goods store: they were prototypes straight from the headquarters of Bauer Hockey, of the updated One95 stick and the brand-new Vapor X:60. All the hockey fans at PixelMEDIA crowded around and hefted the sticks, inspecting the technical innovations and admiring their lighter weight.

The sticks stayed in the office through the fall, as the PixelMEDIA team worked to bring them online. Bauer Hockey hired PixelMEDIA to tackle the MY BAUER project, a rich Flash application where players can purchase and personalize Bauer’s top-of-the-line sticks. From choosing a pattern, grip, and color to printing a player’s name right on the stick, MY BAUER walks users through their choices and gives a three-dimensional preview of their purchase.

PixelMEDIA was tasked with updating the site’s look and overhauling the platform that supported it. For Bauer, administering the site would be easier than ever, from managing attributes to handing out discount codes. And the modular, flexible Flash client delivered faster performance and paved the way to new sticks.

For PixelMEDIA, working on MY BAUER meant creating a rich retail experience. The stick models had to look good and load quickly. Customers demanded a full-featured shopping experience, where they could tweak their stick for hours, store it in an online “stick rack” and then share it with a teammate, or say, a parent with a credit card. And the bilingual site made players feel at home whether they logged on from Madison, Wisconsin or Saint-Jérôme, Quebec.

Since MY BAUER launched, PixelMEDIA has had the pleasure of working closely with the Bauer team to maintain and enhance the site, and to launch new product lines – like the Vapor X:60 goalie stick, available as of December.

The upgrades in the technology of MY BAUER allows us to easily update the wide variety of choices we are able to provide the consumer as well as enhance the overall user experience. —Evan Baker, Product Line Manager, Sticks, Bauer Hockey.

The Impact

• Deliver a new look and rebrand for Bauer’s premium retail experience
• Design a bi-lingual site with fully configurable product options
• Support transactions in multiple currencies
• Move MY BAUER to a new e-commerce platform, for simpler maintenance and greater reliability
• Replace the existing stick configurator with a modular, easy-to-update Flash client

Tags: Application development, Bauer Hockey, ecommerce, Flash