Fischbacher 1819 is a leading Swiss textile manufacturer with a history dating back over 200 years — all while embracing modern technologies and leading the way in sustainability. The company is known for its high-quality fabrics and innovative designs, which are used by interior designers, architects and other professionals around the world.

Telescopic teamed up with Christian Fischbacher in 2016, initially to fix up a website that was part of a relaunch.

Since then, we’ve consistently supported the team with ongoing system updates, fixes and fresh digital perspectives. We’ve completed two replatforms and combined multiple systems and data sources. The recent rebrand to Fischbacher 1819 was a great opportunity to (again) review the effectiveness of their current setup and come up with new ideas. And to transition from a complex platform that is becoming obsolete and buggy to a fresh start.

Sometimes it’s tempting to throw everything away and start from scratch — but in this case, we didn’t want to throw the baby out with the bath water!

We’re now helping to prepare Fischbacher 1819 for future advancements, marking a rewarding milestone in our eight-year partnership.

A redesign to celebrate the brand’s over 200-year history provided an opportunity to reassess the website’s purpose, user groups and structure, making sure it works as efficiently as possible for the company.

The first objective: release the new brand rapidly while reviewing and upgrading the website’s underlying systems.

A full replatform is always a painful process, and ensuring a thoughtful approach was essential.
Because the website supports daily activities behind the scenes, not just serving as the business’s face, we quickly devised a clever strategy to meet the brief and efficiently plan a full replatform — but implementing this in carefully planned stages to minimise any disruption.

The opportunity was clear: modernise business processes (which is no mean feat for an international distributed team in a 200-year-old company!) while automating labour-intensive tasks and integrating product management systems more effectively.

Assess

We started with a thorough assessment of the current setup, working with the leadership team to establish goal setting and vision planning.

We evaluated current business priorities, user groups, current tech stack and presented possibilities.

Plan

A multi-staged plan encompassing every step of a replatform, timed to allow a quick rebrand release.

Here’s what the full plan entails:

• Automatic syncing with product management tools to avoid repetitive editing
• Integrating the asset management system more tightly to prevent media duplicates
• Include stock management data integration for smoother operations
• Add CRM integration to keep customer data connected
• Made sure our content works globally with multi-language options
• Set up an easy sample ordering system to improve customer experience
• Redesign the worldwide distribution map to better showcase showrooms and partner dealers
• Managed a tricky data migration without losing any important product data

The goal is to make the Fischbacher’s team’s life easier and provide up-to-date information to customers worldwide. It gives customers what they expect from a leading textile company like Fischbacher 1819: a seamless and satisfying experience.

Implement

Phase one of the website redesign prioritised user experience with a focus on the main user groups, improving navigation and opportunities to highlight content on the homepage. These upgrades were key to allow the marketing team to generate fresh and relevant content while allowing for experimentation.

The key was the underlying technology solution: by using flexible building blocks within the old system, we managed to quickly apply a new brand onto a very complex system while keeping the old tech in place and avoiding complex data migration during the brand refresh.

This meant we could focus on one key issue at a time.

Subsequent implementation phases will move the remaining legacy pages and functionality to modern platforms over the span of several months. All invisible to the end users.

The new build focuses on showing content that matters most to Fischbacher 1819’s key customer groups. This includes incorporating more flexible calls-to-action so the website provides relevant content and easy-to-reach information.

Automated translation tools in the new CMS make the marketing team’s day-to-day content management easier and more efficient.

We’ve successfully managed a tight deadline to improve their website and we’ll continue to support the business operations through this crucial next phase of their digital journey.

This project shows how powerful it can be when companies like ours and Fischbacher 1819 team up, sharing the same values and aims.

This ongoing collaboration means we’ll keep making targeted improvements. Approaching a project as a business objective rather than a one-time task shifts the focus to ongoing enhancement instead of quick fixes and shortcuts.

As we move forward, Fischbacher 1819 will continue to stand out as a leading global textile company that customers choose and trust.