Founded in 1923 in Manzano, Italy, Calligaris began as a small chair workshop and has grown into an international furniture brand known for its contemporary designs. With a portfolio ranging from tables and chairs to sofas and home décor, the company blends Italian craftsmanship with modern materials and innovation. Today, Calligaris operates globally through flagship stores, retail partners, and showrooms across Europe, North America, Asia, and beyond.
When legacy tech holds back growth
Calligaris’ B2B business was running on a legacy system that was both difficult to manage on the back end and frustratingly slow on the front end. Uploading product information took too long, and the user experience was so poor that many customers browsed the B2C site and then resorted to placing orders by phone. This inefficiency highlighted the need for a modern digital solution.
Delivering a new B2B experience, fast
Calligaris partnered with Alpenite, a digital transformation agency with offices in London, Milan, Rome, and Venice. Alpenite specializes in commerce, customer experience, and enabling technologies, helping brands implement omni-channel and data-driven strategies.
Within five months, Alpenite delivered a new B2B portal, followed shortly after by a revamped B2C site. The architecture included:
- Commerce Layer — Transactional engine
- Contentful — CMS
- Vercel — CDN
- Klevu — Search
- JDE — ERP
- Microsoft Dynamics — CRM
- Azure — ESB
The new B2B portal was designed with layered user visibility and access. Area Managers can view all orders placed by their reporting Agents and Subagents, while individual Agents can place and track orders for their own clients without visibility into their colleagues’ activity. Subagents’ orders are visible only to the Agents they report to and to the Area Managers, they can not see the orders of their Agents. This granular control is powered by a tagging system that governs both order history and shipping address visibility, ensuring that data access is tailored to each role.
The new portal, also, offers a quotation service that allows agents to create personalised offers, which can then be retrieved and confirmed. This tool facilitates sales management, allowing agents to prepare multiple quotations, share them with customers and store them in Commerce Layer until the order is finally confirmed.
Order approval flows are managed within the ERP, though they could be handled in Commerce Layer depending on the use case. Multiple markets were also implemented, each tied to a specific price list.
Operational excellence through modern infrastructure
With their new digital infrastructure, Calligaris achieved:
- Streamlined operations
A modern portal with products and prices organized by market. - Efficiency gains
Manual phone orders were eliminated, replaced by a faster, error-reducing digital process fully integrated with the ERP. - Enhanced sales workflows
Agents can create and manage multiple estimate orders, share them with clients, and archive them in Commerce Layer, where they remain accessible until confirmed.
As a result, Calligaris headquarters now have a scalable, efficient, and user-friendly platform that supports both their B2B and B2C growth worldwide.