Samsonite Brands: Master Architecture
Hartmann is a luggage and leather goods company that has been in business for over 100 years. They were acquired by Samsonite and now represent the premium end of their various luggage and storage brands, which include Samsonite, American Tourister, High Sierra, JS Trunk & Co, etc.
Starting with Hartmann, I was tasked with developing a "master architecture" of site templates that could be applied to the complete family of Samsonite brands on the Demandware platform. Although each site would have its own look and feel due to distinct style guides, the set of features and functionality and the layout templates within the site experience would be standardized across the range of brand sites. This approach would allow Samsonite to more rapidly deploy refreshed, modern sites for each of their brands in a fraction of the time that would be needed if considering each site in isolation. We would start with domestic domains first and then roll out this architecture to the full set of international sites. To ensure that the master architecture would be flexible enough to work for all brands across all countries, I worked initially to define requirements for each brand and consolidate these into a core set of features for the initial rollout. Once launched, each brand site could diverge from their siblings through planned releases of custom functionality.
The wireframes below represent a sample of the work that was produced for the Hartmann site redesign. They cover the site header, footer, and homepage, as well as associated elements and pages such as the mini-cart, category dropdown menus, store locator, and contact us form as well as all associated desktop, tablet, and smartphone viewports for the responsive design.
You can peruse the master architecture in action by visiting the websites for Hartmann, Samsonite, American Tourister, High Sierra, and JS Trunk and Co. (the latter of which is an umbrella brand with the intent of selling all of Samsonite's many luggage and storage goods.
