Community Spotlight on Skialper: Piramid Studio digitizes Skialper’s buyers guide using Commerce Layer.
Skialper is a magazine published by Mulatero Editore, a publishing house founded in Italy in 1994 and managed by editorial director and alpine ski instructor, Davide Marta. Davide created the Skialper Buyer’s Guide, a 600+ page encyclopedia of expert reviews, now in its 12th edition. Joined by a passionate team of freeriders, ski instructors, and elite Mountain Guides, Skialper researches, tests, and profiles the latest ski mountaineering, freeriding, and splitboarding gear. Skialper has cultivated such a loyal following for their knowledge and in-depth reviews that many ski shops in Italy rely on their findings to stock their shops.
As a brand that was built on the publishing of physical guides, Skialper decided to take a new approach by completely digitizing their content. A digital format would save a considerable amount in printing and shipping costs. Davide and the team also wanted to expand their footprint from Italy by localizing the guide, a step much more efficient when hosted online. Digitizing the guide would also enable them to create new services, like recommendations based on a skier’s profile. That kind of personalization would add an entirely new dimension to the experience.
Skialper chose Piramid Studio to lead this digital transformation. They were tasked with creating a completely digital version of the Skialper’s Buyer’s Guide, along with the capability both to sell yearly subscriptions online, and to capture customer profiles.
The original Skialper site that sold physical products was built on Wordpress with a WooCommerce plug-in. Piramid Studio decided to scrap that and build a completely new headless store for the digital edition. A headless approach would provide more flexibility to create more enriched content with a personalized online experience for Skialper’s readers. Piramid built a beautiful frontend using a combination of Remix, React, and Tailwind CSS. They also selected Dato CMS to streamline content creation, which was crucial given the new digital issue of the Skialper buyers guide. A final, critical component remained, selecting the commerce engine.
Piramid prioritized platforms with strong track records of working seamlessly with other headless components. For them, it wasn’t enough to have an API that connected to an ecommerce backend. They sought an API with a breadth of endpoints that brought commerce functionality to the entire frontend experience without limitation. And because Skialper had chosen to sell subscriptions to their annual guide, the commerce platform needed to support that option as well. Piramid evaluated the platforms that they had worked with before. They found that the APIs available were limited in functionality, and, critically, lacked support for subscriptions.
Piramid discovered Commerce Layer through its developer network. After researching the platform and seeing a demo, they decided to build a POC using Commerce Layer’s free Developer Plan.
They immediately saw how Commerce Layer’s APIs could integrate easily with their existing frontend. They implemented Commerce Layer’s React components to power client-side commerce elements such as price and stock availability. They then used Commerce Layer’s REST API to power other functionality, such as user accounts and subscriptions. They also forked and customized Commerce Layer’s Checkout application, which saved weeks of work rather than building a checkout from scratch.
Throughout their development cycle, they leveraged Commerce Layer’s documentation and Slack community to understand better the aspects of the platform and to accelerate their go-to-market. The community was particularly instrumental in helping Piramid to get the Skialper project live. By chatting with both developers from the community and the Commerce Layer team, Piramid implemented the capabilities required to offer an annual subscription to Skialper readers. Though this initial project took them six months to launch, the Piramid team is confident that it can launch future Commerce Layer projects in just one month.
The final result is a beautiful online experience that captures the aesthetic and depth of information of Skialper’s Buyers Guide. After a soft launch, Skialper has already seen more global purchases of their guide, with their long-time subscribers reaching out and complimenting them on the new online experience. Skialper has since expanded Piramid Studio’s remit to sell other annual guides and even physical commerce. Given the solid composable foundation they’ve already built with Commerce Layer, the Piramid team has said that it’ll be much easier to launch new ideas and scale as needed.
Our end customers reacted positively to the digital version and our client is very happy with the product. Commerce Layer’s micro frontends saved us time, and their responsive developer community supported us through our first implementation.
