Stave Puzzles is a very unique business based out of Norwich, VT – truly a one-of-a-kind manufacturer of high end puzzles. Stave puzzles are very well-known in the serious “puzzler” community and are often referred to as the “Rolls Royce of puzzles” for two reasons:

  1. The incredible quality of their wooden, custom creations
  2. The highly challenging nature of their puzzles

Stave Puzzle Tree of Life

A Cut Above the Rest

Stave products are truly in a different class to your everyday hobby shop puzzle. Created both by hand and by machine-programmed saws that cut the pieces out of laminated wood, they are luxurious to hold and work with – a very different experience than your typical cardboard puzzle.

When compared to mass-produced puzzles there’s no denying that they’re very expensive; but you truly could consider these as collectors items. You can request a custom job, which they’ll quote for you, or choose one of their stock designs of specialty art or scenes which they create themselves.

For the Stave team, it’s not just about the quality and the art. They go to lengths to apply an unconventional approach to puzzles that make them fun and challenging – they can be frustratingly difficult. When asked about why they are so hard you would typically get a laugh from a Stave staffer before they explain that they pride themselves on creating “challenging but solvable” puzzles. Aptly, the staff at Stave are called, “Tormentors”. They love the idea of torturing your brain, teasing you into submission. True puzzlers will enjoy this type of challenge and take their time working with all of the wonderful pieces that come with a purchased product.

A Move to BigCommerce

Stave first approached us in late 2020 — mid-pandemic — with a number of concerns about their legacy platform and a number of needs as they eyed e-commerce expansion. These needs included:

  1. Desire for SaaS in order to gain more stability and control over their technology and operations
  2. A robust content management and self-service management of the e-commerce website team
  3. An API-centric platform that could be integrated with third party tools and apps as the business needs evolve.

After a review of a number of options Stave decided to heed Acccorin’s recommendation to go with Big Commerce Enterprise edition.

Discover > Design > Define > Develop

Accorin guided the Stave team through a comprehensive Discovery and Design process that yielded some requirements that were, no surprise, unique to Stave but given the API-friendly architecture of BigCommerce presented few problems for our development team.

The design effort focused on Stave’s products. Beautiful photography,  rich product descriptions and call to actions (CTAs) were a key part of the Stave team’s involvement in the project. Visually the site captures the quality and visual characteristics of Stave products – super important in differentiating them from other high end game and puzzle purveyors.

stave puzzles PLP

Critically, Accorin proposed (and Stave accepted) the use of Accorin’s EAI tool RocketFlowz to ease integration of data used for orders into ERP, reward points data from ERP bulk pricing updates, gift card data and future integrations that are on a longer term road map. RocketFlowz sits outside of Big Commerce and requires a small licensing fee in addition to the BigCommerce license along with some minimal maintenance hours from Accorin each month but as a proven integration hub, it serves the business well and also provides a foundation for future integrations.

Data Migration and Launch

Not to be overlooked, Accorin also guided Stave through a data migration process that resulted in legacy loyalty points and order data being transferred according to specifications defined in the initial planning phases.

With data transferred and verified, we worked through our tried and true quality assurance (QA) testing process to check all end-to-end functionality, and front end (cross browser and device) testing. Any found bugs were squashed and with completion of the client’s user acceptance testing (UAT), we successfully launched this past Winter.

Results

Thus far, the Stave team (“Tormentors”) are incredibly happy with the final product. Conversion rates have increased significantly since the move to BigCommerce was completed. The Stave team is thrilled to have its required integrations with their ERP working, and to have an admin interface that allows them to more easily manage content, including their very active blog and product pages.

From the Accorin point of view, we couldn’t be happier with how the Stave Puzzles site turned out. So far, the results speak for themselves, and we look forward to helping the Stave team continue their playful tormenting with future marketing and e-commerce support projects as their business evolves.

If you’d like to learn more about this project, our BigCommerce capabilities, or any of our projects and capabilities, get in touch!

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