Vintageria

Vintage fashion with the focus on sustainability

Vintageria’s online store was based on the vision of making it possible to experience the famous vintage fashion store in Venice online as well as it being internationally accessible. The online platform’s target group is a young audience who are interested in the fashion of the 1980s and 1990s, and who place great importance on being environmentally conscious. Vintageria’s business model focuses on sustainability, and the company therefore uses recycled packaging material, and planted a tree for every purchase made in the store. With the launch of the online store, the selected individual items from Vintageria were also available online for the first time, which initially opened up another sales channel.

The user interface including filter options in the style of a 1980s video game

An original ecommerce website with a playful look

However, it is not just the products of Vintageria that are inspiring with their ‘80s and ‘90s panache, but also the design of the online store, which captures the atmosphere of the iconic decades with its ironic tone: In the demo store of the vintage fashion brand, pixelated icons, product images in the style of Polaroid photos, VHS effects, models with animal masks, dancing unicorns and playful filters can be discovered.

Besides humorous GIFs, there is plenty more to discover at Vintageria

A special online store for Vintageria

For the implementation of its B2C store, Vintageria worked closely with the Shopware partner agency HCE from Italy. “HCE, the agency that is responsible for the entire project, decided to use Shopware because it is one of the most reliable and promising ecommerce platforms on the market”, says Riccardo Zanon, Head of ecommerce department at Vintageria. Vintageria decided from the start that they wanted to use open source technology for the implementation of the project. This approach has the advantage that the software is developed collaboratively with the participation of the community, so that many things are tested and improved. Therefore, Shopware’s open source approach represents another plus point for the company.

As a pithy statement of diversity, the models in the images in the online store wear different animal masks

Hip ‘80s and ‘90s vibes inspire the target group

To create a unique ‘80s and ‘90s atmosphere for the online store, a heavily adapted version of the Shopware Progressive Web App (PWA) was used. The visual design of the online presence and the performance of the user interface are reminiscent of a 1980s video game. Vintageria's online store catches the eye with various individually created videos and memes, as well as several small animations, matching the themes of sustainability and inclusion.

The loading, ZX Spectrum style

Vintageria's online shop also convinced the jury of the Awwwards, an award for design, creativity and innovation on the internet. Here, the shop achieved an average rating of 7.41 out of 10 points in the categories design, usability, creativity, content, mobile and development.

Customer-specific solution from Shopware partner HCE

An online vintage fashion business had special requirements which Vintageria’s new online store had to accommodate. To implement the specific conditions and very complex frontend requirements, HCE developed a total of 30 customised extensions. These were integrated seamlessly into the core Shopware features thanks to the flexible structure of Shopware. “As our products are all unique and we only accept online payments, HCE had to adapt the entire checkout and ordering process in order to test availability in real time, thereby avoiding ‘duplicate selling’, and to remove outstanding unpaid orders”, says Riccardo of Vintageria.

The pixelated smileys, which appear on the faces of the people depicted, and which are part of the unique charm of the online presence, required the development of a user-friendly extension by HCE. To implement this feature, HCE provided the smileys and integrated artificial intelligence, which ensures the correct final position of the smileys on the image in question. 

The homepage slider with a pixelated smile

The Shopware PWA

Vintageria was the first online store based on the new Shopware PWA. This enabled those involved to work on the project with no limits to their creativity whilst retaining the customary user-friendliness. Vintageria wanted to use an individual and original theme instead of a preconceived one, and this was possible thanks to the Shopware PWA and the headless infrastructure. Another positive was that with the PWA, the frontend logic is completely separate from the logic in the backend. This aspect enables the creation of interfaces that are precisely adapted to the relevant requirements, and allows plenty of freedom in designing the online store. “As we were on the lookout for something new, Shopware 6 with its PWA feature was recommended to us. We particularly liked the flexibility of Shopware, which optimally fulfilled the requirements of the project. We were already familiar with Symfony, the basis of the software, and we were therefore able to familiarise ourselves quickly with the product,” says Emanuele Bottaro, co-founder of HCE.

In this video, Dominik Klein, Developer Experience Manager at Shopware, explains what excites him so much about Vintageria’s online store and how the web store utilized the advantages of PWA.

Launch after nine months

Together with HCE, Vintageria was able to create the online store of the label within only nine months, allowing the online store to go live as planned in English and Italian at the end of November 2020. The store features around 2,000 unique vintage pieces in a total of 40 different product categories.

75 % des Traffics wurden anfänglich von mobilen Geräten aus generiert, was zu der jungen Zielgruppe von Vintageria (18 bis 30 Jahre) passte. Umso vorteilhafter war das flüssige und nutzerfreundliche Mobile-Shopping-Erlebnis, welches Shopwares technologische Basis und die PWA-Funktionen ermöglichten. 

Conclusion on the project 

Thanks to its reliable infrastructure and the integration of a state-of-the-art PWA front-end, Shopware was able to meet the specific requirements of the project, successfully contributing to the go-live in November 2022.

"We know we can perform well thanks to Shopware's solid embedding and its ability to process large amounts of data," Riccardo told Vintageria. The collaboration between Shopware, Shopware Partner Agency HCE and Vintageria has worked well, so Vintageria's demo store continues to be recommended as a fascinating showcase of the Shopware PWA.