MOO.com
Introducing branded merchandise to the world
Context
In 2023, premium online printing business MOO needed to re-imagine their ecommerce experience. We partnered with MOO to define their strategic vision for a new storefront with branded merchandise at the heart of it. We set their product roadmap, and build product, design and research capability to accelerate progress.
The brief
A year later, with the platform nearing launch and new physical products (e.g. pens, bottles, tumblers, mugs and notepads) already en route to warehouses, MOO faced a critical juncture. Launching a new storefront alongside an entirely new product line was a daunting operational shift. It was a large, complex and highly interdependent programme of work. MOO turned to Loomery for delivery leadership.
Reporting into the Chief Product and Technology Officer we brought structure to the work, navigated risks and dependencies, and guided MOO through this strategically complex transformation.
Setting the foundations to bring a strategic vision to life
We started by piecing together a fit-for-purpose delivery model. We interviewed 20 stakeholders from across the business within the first week to understand the challenges ahead, and quickly learned that enabling cross-functionality and aligning delivery timelines across teams would be critical.
Launching products is a process laced with complex inter-dependencies. For example: to launch a personalised water bottle, MOO’s operational team needs technical customisation specifications, which must be determined in partnership with the third parties that would do the laser etch on the bottles for customers. Without those, MOO’s creative teams cannot design assets and marketing collateral to market the product. And without these, MOO’s technology teams cannot configure an eCommerce journey for the product. In other words, there’s many moving parts.
Forming a team and a plan
We established and led a new cross-functional team to oversee the programme. This comprised senior experts from operations, technology, marketing and category management, alongside delivery professionals we coached. We facilitated a series of workshops to map the end-to-end launch process, identifying key touch-points and interdependencies.
Having an agreed sequence and timing of product launches was critical to enable joined-up delivery. We created a prioritisation framework factoring stock availability, commercial opportunity, and readiness of relevant platform functionality. This framework enabled the creation of a product and feature roadmap across teams that got them aligned and acted as the backbone of the programme delivery plan for the coming 12 months.
Acting as a central point of progress
By April, MOO’s first branded merchandise product, the MOO Twist Pen was in stock and ready to put live on the new storefront but last minute operational complexities threatened to stall the launch. MOO still needed to finalise the customisation guidelines they present to customers to guide their artwork uploads, which required building confidence in the capabilities of an external customisation partner.
Our approach was to steer MOO through this complexity, and calmly unblock the team when they got stuck. We ensured risks were highlighted early, provided pragmatic mitigations and wrote clear briefing materials to enable senior stakeholders to make decisions that enabled a timely product launch.
Scaling it up
The roll out of MOO’s new storefront was carefully managed to mitigate risk. Initially the platform was opened to a small volume of traffic. This meant we could test the novel approach to merchandising and fulfilment, giving MOO confidence the platform behaved as intended with real customers, before scaling traffic.
With the eCommerce team, we identified an approach to steadily increase traffic to the new platform. By systematically replacing the destination of links on the legacy site’s navigation we were able to gently route more traffic to the new experience. When traffic was increased, this was paired with clear, targeted communications, including identified risks and mitigations, which kept teams calm, confident and aligned.
As the programme matured, so did our process for launching physical products. By summer we hit a major milestone: launching two products in a single month. MOO hadn’t achieved this feat since 2007, and the launch of the Tape Bound Notebook and MOO Softcover Notebook in July showed we were making excellent progress.
We optimised the launch process by mapping the full value chain and measuring cycle time at every stage to identify and remove blockages in our process. Ultimately, the product launch timeframes dropped from six weeks on average to two weeks, a 66% reduction.
Breaking siloes to make impact
Our delivery leadership moved the whole business forward. We built tailored reporting and communications for each audience within the organisation. High level launch funnels for MOO’s senior leadership team, traffic-light status updates for key programme stakeholders, and concise weeknotes that acted as a mechanism to engage the wider company.
Over the course of the year Loomery’s delivery leadership took MOO’s business strategy from 0 to 1. We launched over 250 new product variants, helped MOO secure their first 500 orders on the new platform, and exceeded the platform’s annual target. The practices, artefacts and ceremonies we put in place during this programme of work are still being used at MOO today. We continue to provide MOO with both product and delivery, including shaping the programme plan for the migration of legacy digital services and physical products onto the new storefront.
"Loomery's delivery leadership has been absolutely critical in turning our strategic vision for branded merchandise into a reality. The momentum they created was transformative for MOO, and has given us a repeatable way to launch products with confidence"
- Claire Donald, Chief Product & Technology Officer
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