cloud / AWS / DevOps / development / support /

Cotton On speeds towards ecommerce future with base2Services

"base2Services' autoscaling initiative slashed our ongoing Amazon hosting costs and at the same time allowed our websites to breeze through hectic shopping events like Boxing Day and Click Frenzy. I would definitely recommend them and use them in the future."

John Stojanovski, Group Web Development Manager, Cotton On

A bit about Cotton On

The Cotton On Group is one of Australia's premier retail brands. The company operates a number of value-focused chains including Cotton On, Supre, Rubi Shoes, Factorie, T-Bar and Typo. It has around 1200 stores and employs up to 17,000 staff both in Australia and abroad.

What Cotton On needed

Cotton On maintains a separate online store for each of its brands. To ensure customer satisfaction and guarantee online sales revenue, the retailer needed to ensure its websites are functional at all times and can scale with significant levels of traffic during peak shopping periods and to the demands of direct marketing campaigns.

However, sustaining Cotton On's sites and its Amazon hosting infrastructure distracted its online team from implementing new features for its websites. The team was required to work after-hours in order to test code and perform system maintenance.

Cotton On needed a solution that allowed it to better harness its in-house development team and drive efficiencies with its online business.

How base2Services delivered

base2Services provided an ongoing Managed Service which included the proactive monitoring of Cotton On's sites, the streamlining of issue management and the optimisation of new feature deployments on its website.

base2Services' experience and expert advice also helped Cotton On reduce its Amazon hosting costs. Harnessing our expertise in the ecommerce environment, base2Services designed and implemented a system that would integrate into the monitoring platform to automatically scale the required Amazon architecture depending on web traffic -- drastically reducing the company's hosting costs.

Moreover, base2Services identified potential problems resulting from code changes on Cotton On's websites in real time, well before they became an issue for its customers and its management.

See the impressive results

  • Cotton On's engagement with base2Services achieved cost neutrality within only three months, after an originally estimated 12 months to achieve this goal
  • Cotton On saved around 30 per cent per month on Amazon costs
  • base2Services eliminated the need for Cotton On staff to perform maintenance and after-hours testing, driving staff retention and loyalty
  • Cotton On's in-house DevOps team now focuses on mission critical tasks and deploys new services at a greater pace
  • base2Services' solution allowed Cotton On to accurately predict all costs associated with Amazon's service on a per-hour basis, allowing for greater planning and budgeting
  • 3 Months Cost neutrality within only three months
  • 30% Cost Saving
  • Loyalty Increased staff retention and loyalty