What led to this success, and how did our configurator help the client with their business?
We brought a product online that hadn’t been there before. In record time and 20% cheaper than the budget allowed.
The idea to build the world’s first civilian firearms configurator came from the client – Česká zbrojovka. Whilst in the automotive industry it became standard practice five to ten years ago to configure your own car, in the firearms sector no one in the world had taken this step yet.
At the start of the project, we defined three key requirements together with the client:
- Ease of use for the end customer
- Flawless functionality and 100% resolution of technical details
- Readiness of the solution for localisation in 90 countries worldwide to which Česká zbrojovka currently supplies firearms. Bearing in mind that different legislation applies in each country regarding the ordering of firearms, online payment, transport of firearms, etc. We had to take all of this into account from the very beginning.
A luxury that exceeded the expectations of even the most demanding end customers
The finished configurator provides the end customer with a more luxurious solution than they could ever have expected:
- Up to 25,000,000 combinations of a single product. A sport shooter, hunter or other private gun owner can choose from so many variants when deciding to assemble a new firearm online.
- The configurator automatically displays the price of the current combination and offers options for further customisation.
- The configurator allows users to save a work-in-progress firearm or send a selected configuration to friends for inspiration. It thus supports sharing and dissemination, which proves to be a sound move from a marketing perspective. Other users can also adopt the shared configuration and adapt it to their own preferences. This gives rise to further variants, which people save and pass on.
- Once assembled, the system automatically sends the configured weapon to production.
- The system is set up to ensure compliance with legislation. Only holders of a valid firearms licence can order and have a weapon manufactured.
Online gift collection & firearms? The icing on the cake
An additional service is the so-called “gift collection” option – the ability to customise your own firearm and organise a collection among friends to fund its production. We have made the whole process convenient – users can track in real time how much has already been raised in the fund, and the system automatically notifies participants of the time remaining and encourages them to make a contribution.
The process is again modelled in accordance with local legislation. In the basic Czech version, for example, only the organiser of the collection can collect the finished firearm.
Concrete, measurable results. The only thing that ultimately counts
The whole agency lived and breathed the configurator for 7 months. The reward is more than sweet, and we are all proud of the results:
- The project caused a minor revolution within the client’s target group. The client recorded the first paid orders on the very first day.
- Turnover in the first few months ran into the millions of CZK, and the client estimated the return on investment at around 10–12 months (exact figures cannot be disclosed).
- Thanks to the fact that Česká zbrojovka was the first to launch an online configurator, it received significant media coverage not only in the Czech Republic but also in other international markets.
- The project was completed in a record time of 7 months from the first meeting, with a final budget 20% lower than the client had allocated.
„It was a huge project and we managed to complete it in record time – within 7 months of the first meeting. This configurator wasn’t the first major IT project I’d been involved in, but it was the very first time we met the deadline and didn’t exhaust the entire budget. AITOM put together a team of exceptional people who always did what they were supposed to do, delivered on their promises, and brought a great deal of their expertise and value to the project.“
Petr Pištělák
Global Head of Sales
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