Enterprise digital commerce platform enters South Africa, powering The Foschini Group – TFG’s digital transformation

VTEX, the enterprise digital commerce platform for premier brands and retailers, announced it now has clients with active online stores in all 5 continents, reinforcing its global expansion with the launch of its first South African digital commerce project for TFG (The Foschini Group), one of the leading retail companies in the region. Due to the comprehensiveness and resilience of VTEX platform, TFG launched a unified, headless marketplace (bash.com) in just four months despite unique challenges – making it the first traditional brick and mortar retailer in South Africa to create an online shopping platform of this kind.

With around 30 retail brands – such as Sportscene, @Home, Foschini, Totalsports, Markham, among others – operating across five continents and present in over 4,300 locations, TFG sought the help of VTEX to move beyond its brick-and-mortar roots and become a digital powerhouse in South Africa – migrating from a legacy system that limited the Group to have individual websites for each brand. By using a headless approach, TFG has full control of the content management system (CMS), which provides flexibility for each individual brand to customize their marketplace sites, while also providing a seamless, easy checkout experience for customers.

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“What drew us to VTEX was the simplified API integration, personalization, and better features for customers. We are at the beginning of our omnichannel journey and when compared to its competitors, VTEX was the best choice in terms of superior capabilities at a fraction of the time,” said Luke Jedeikin, co-Head of TFG Labs. “The Foschini Group’s goal through every step of the digital transformation process has been to deliver a consistently exceptional experience for our customers. Whether it is creating an exciting mobile experience for shoppers or ensuring our last-mile fulfillment promises are met”.

VTEX makes it easy for businesses to enter into new markets or expand their capabilities by providing an adaptable and customizable platform for enterprise companies of all industries and in any location. VTEX does the work to understand the unique market behaviors so that its customers can focus on their own business and stakeholders, while limiting the need and investment in additional tech support.

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In South Africa specifically, shoppers do not always have access to email accounts for logins, so VTEX offered TFG a customized solution to use login with a cellphone number. Local logistics is also a challenging process so they needed a sophisticated solution that could handle many scenarios out of the box. VTEX recognized these particularities and bash.com marketplace was configured and implemented to best suit TFG’s and its consumers’ needs.

“Each new region that we enter presents its own unique challenges and opportunities, so we have learned that our customers need much more than a one size fits all solution – commerce varies greatly among different countries,” said Mariano Gomide de Faria, founder and co-CEO of VTEX. “I am extremely proud of our team for working so quickly to deliver a comprehensive marketplace solution for TFG. I am also excited to announce that VTEX now has clients with active online stores in all 5 continents.”