About FORCE3
FORCE3 is a sports equipment shop known for its high-quality protective gear. It designs a wide range of products for adults and young athletes—including masks, shin guards, and chest protectors—to raise the bar for sports safety, particularly for baseball and softball. It is known for its patented revolutionary spring-based masks and for using proven technologies such as Dupont Kevlar padding to set the standard for keeping players safe.
FORCE3’s mission is to end concussions and other injuries. In ball sports like baseball, most concussions are caused by foul balls cutting directly into the umpire’s or catcher’s masks. To address the problem, FORCE3 created a patented safety spring technology to absorb the impact that can go straight back through the player’s head.
Need
FORCE3 needed to integrate a custom glove builder in its eCommerce site so users can customize their glove and catcher online. They also wanted to move to Magento from WordPress, as Magento is known for having a more robust framework.
About Magento 2.4
When Adobe released Magento Open Source 2.4, the intent was to help merchants advance their digital commerce business to capture new opportunities in the evolving commerce landscape. The latest release has 98 new functionalities, 50 security enhancements, 68 bug fixes, 12 packages and extensions, 7 test cycles, and PHP 7.4 support.
Solution
Using Magento 2.4, we redesigned FORCE3’s online sports equipment shop. The technology has significant developments in its business-focused capabilities. It now has purchase approval workflow functionality to simplify the configuration of approval rules for buyers based on factors like shipping costs, number of SKUs, and order value. We referred to the design provided by the client as pointers for redesigning their website.
Enhanced performance
Magento 2.4’s noteworthy features include enhanced two-factor authentication security, efficient purchase approval workflows, improved platform performance, quality, and security, and seller-assisted shopping for enhanced customer-centric service. Its 30+ security fixes should prevent vulnerabilities such as remote code execution (RCE) and cross-site scripting (XSS), which attackers use as ways to inject malicious content and steal crucial information about the sports equipment shop.
Infrastructure improvements are also crucial aspects of Magento 2.4. It upgraded PayPal JavaScript SDK with PayPal Express Checkout integration and enhanced partial word search with Elasticsearch. Significant performance improvements are also evident, particularly faster page loads at high traffic, speedier Quick Order and add-to-cart performance, and faster reordering and check-out.
Custom glove builder
It was easy to implement the custom Glove builder feature in FORCE3’s redesigned website because of Magento 2.4. Now, customers can easily customize their gloves and catcher on the spot and order the products they need from the website.
The custom glove builder drives a more content-driven experience to increase user engagement. The latest version has improved asset management capabilities in the Media Gallery, with updated Adobe Stock integration to move workflow management into the Media Gallery to save time and resources for creative designers. The fully rebuilt Media Gallery works up to 30 times faster with robust integration with Adobe Stock for easier image search and management and tighter access controls.
Simplified inventory management
With n-Store Pick-Up functionality, FORCE3 can easily manage physical inventory location for pickup in inventory management. Consumers can choose in-store pickup and review other information, such as store opening and closing hours during check-out.
Result
It took us three months to complete the project. FORCE3 has improved as a sports equipment shop by providing a single place to manage inventory and orders from POS and online. This translated into more sales and conversion for the client.
