Centra is a multi-channel e-commerce solution for fashion and lifestyle brands. Since 2016, the Swedish platform has built a solid reputation by becoming the partner of more than a hundred ready-to-wear, sports and accessories brands (Paul Smith, Craft, POC, Stronger, Sandqvist, Nudie Jeans, Björn Borg).
Antoine Caillet, founding partner of Ultrō and Henrik Setterdahl, sales account executive at Centra, led a workshop to present the solution on September 19, 2024 at Paris Retail Week.
Centra, strategy and positioning
Centra is an e-commerce solution of Swedish origin created in 2016. The company has nearly 140 employees spread across Sweden, Poland and the United Kingdom. In ten years, Centra has become the leading e-commerce solution in the Nordic countries, with more than 300 fashion and lifestyle brands supported. A unique specialist positioning that differentiates it from its main competitors such as Adobe Commerce, Shopify Plus and Salesforce Commerce Cloud.
“Medium-sized fashion brands must manage issues similar to those of large companies: consumers around the world to whom they must offer adapted shopping experiences, several warehouses and stores, legal entities in various countries, fiscal and commercial rules to be respected, tax and commercial rules to respect, complex B2B activities with pre-orders and restocks, distributors, prices and commercial conditions based on customer profiles, very high graphic design requirements And of editorial content... But unlike big companies, their teams are small. Only a few people are supposed to run a global business.”
Martin Jensen - Centra CEO
The reasons that led us to become a Centra partner
Ultrō was created in 2009 and has been producing e-commerce sites ever since. The agency worked for several years with open-source e-commerce solutions such as Magento, Woocommerce and Prestashop without being completely satisfied and convinced. Starting in 2018, the agency gradually turned to new SAAS publishers, including Centra. The philosophy of this new generation of publishers is more in line with that of the agency: better UX, total freedom of form, API first, better understanding of brands' business needs where historical solutions have focused more on those of retailers.
The agencie-publisher relationship is also changing the situation: real pre-sales collaboration, the possibility of interacting with technical teams, customer support throughout the project. These are all reasons that push us to offer Centra to our prospects.
Some of Centra's essential merchant features
- Exclusive features to meet the specificities of the fashion market: multi-year collections, carry-over, size guides by product type.
- A native international environment: Centra allows brands to sell internationally through the management of markets (distinct languages/mots/product catalogs) and price lists.
- One of the most advanced promotions engines on the market.
- A native wholesale/B2B channel
List of conditional criteria offered by Centra to create discounts.
Price list: entering a price for each offered currency.
On the UX side, Centra stands out on all aspects
First of all, by allowing agencies to create tailor-made shopping experiences with total freedom of form. A decisive advantage for ready-to-wear, jewelry or cosmetics brands that attach great importance to the digital transposition of their universe. Creative added value that does not come at the expense of performance: Centra is a “headless” site solution whose technical design allows exceptional response times compared to its direct competitors.
Evolution of the loading times for Aulp's brand website before and after migrating from Magento to Centra.
Platform cost
Unlike other providers like Shopify, which charge a percentage of sales revenue, Centra applies a cost based on the number of orders. A volume-based model rather than a value-based one, which prevents penalizing brands with products priced at several hundred euros. The total cost is calculated by adding this variable to the subscription fee and the customer support package (10 days).