Scalable hosting for growth ambitions of webshop Deloox
From local webshop to European market player
Achieving strong international growth ambitions while handling peak loads domestically: at webshop Deloox, this challenge is a reality. While significantly investing in European growth, it's essential that the infrastructure remains stable and scales when needed. The solution? A mix of scalable hosting and a proactive hosting partner.
From Superwinkel to Deloox
In the Dutch market, webshop Deloox – formerly Superwinkel – decided three and a half years ago to fully refocus on perfume and beauty products. Until that time, the online department store had offered a broader assortment. Despite being elected the best webshop in the department store category, competing with this broad assortment against Bol.com and Amazon proved impossible.
After an extensive rebranding process, the focus is back on one product market. The webshop has now expanded to the Belgian, German, Italian, Spanish, and Swedish markets.
Challenges of internationalization
Besides maintaining and strengthening its position in the top hundred largest webshops in the Netherlands, Deloox's biggest ambition is to become one of Europe's largest online beauty shops. This brings challenges: the company must conduct all activities in multiple languages, and each market is different.
Each country also has its own characteristics in payment methods and customer preferences. By operating as locally as possible, with local customer service, mailing address, and phone number, Deloox aims to give customers a sense of reliability.
Flexible hosting
Deloox built its platform entirely in-house and grew on an infrastructure designed for the Dutch market. The infrastructure's scalability is essential to enabling (continued) growth.
An important factor is handling peak loads during the high season. In November and December, from Black Friday through Christmas , traffic can increase to three times the normal volume. Deloox sought a partner who proactively considers how to be scalable during these peak moments.
In that search, Deloox found TrueFullstaq. Setting up and making the hosting infrastructure scalable immediately became the main goal.
Proactive collaboration
For partnerships like the one with Deloox, TrueFullstaq engineers reach out before peak periods to discuss these moments. Based on expected traffic, they propose adjustments tailored to that period. After the peak period, everything is scaled back down.
Future plans: resources per microservice
As part of European expansion, Deloox wants to convert various applications to microservices and opt for more off-the-shelf solutions. The company is looking at Kubernetes to align hosting with the software. This would allow Deloox to allocate resources per microservice and better support performance as the company continues to grow.
At TrueFullstaq, we like to take the lead in realizing these ambitions. Through thinking along, brainstorming, and advising, we provide the groundwork for our customers' dreams. All on a reliable and strong foundation from TrueFullstaq.
