of attack, but fell prey to the code injection from... websites have recorded a much lower bounce rate.

AT–A–GLANCE
COMPANY: John Hardy
INDUSTRY: Jewelry and luxury accessories
WHAT THEY DO: John Hardy is a
handmade jewelry brand reshaping the
experience of luxury through a heritage of
design, craftsmanship, quality and
sustainability.
IT GOALS: John Hardy looked to partner
with a trusted IT hosting company to
improve website performance globally;
receive 7X24X365 technical support; ensure
100% network uptime of its global website;
and have a secure and reliable hosting
experience to support its expansion in Asia.
SOLUTION: John Hardy chose
Rackspace’s dedicated hosting solution to
enjoy guaranteed SLAs, 24x7x365 support,
comprehensive security protection and the
flexibility to scale.
John Hardy Fuels Global E-Business
Expansion with Rackspace Managed
Hosting and Fanatical Support ®
LUXURY E-MARKET, A GROWING
TREND
Founded in Bali in 1975, John Hardy’s collections
are available in the United States, the United
Kingdom, Japan, France and Indonesia among
other countries. In September 2011, John Hardy
launched its first ever men’s store at one of Hong
Kong’s most prestigious shopping malls, The
Landmark.
John Hardy is widely recognized as a luxury
handmade jewelry brand in the United States.
However, the jewelry brand has global expansion
plans to rapidly grow its business in a number of
markets across Europe, Asia and further in North
America.
In order to capture the fast-growing e-commerce
and online shopping audience for luxury items,
John Hardy decided to revamp its U.S. website,
launching it in September 2011. That was followed
by the launches of the company’s Australia and
Canada websites in November 2011 and its global
site in March 2012.
John Hardy wanted to provide the best customer
experience not only for the 30,000 plus members
of its Hardy Klub, but also for fashion and jewelry
lovers around the world. Its ultimate IT goal is to
expand its e-business while increasing the number
of online purchases.
“More and more people are going online to search
for and purchase luxury products, we recorded
100% year-on-year growth of purchases online
this year,” said Janice Chan, e-commerce director,
John Hardy USA Services Ltd. “This reinforced our
Rackspace Hosting Asia Pacific
Regional Office:
9/F, Cambridge House, Taikoo Place, 979 King’s Road, Quarry Bay, Hong Kong
Sales +852 3752 6488 Support +852 3752 6464 fax +852 2805 0070 Website Address: www.rackspace.com.hk
Rackspace Australia
Suite 3, Level 7, 210 George Street, Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
Sales 1800 722 577 Support 1800 421 267 Website Address: www.rackspace.com.au
BENEFITS: Partnering with Rackspace
gives John Hardy a worry-free IT solution to
enhance customer experience and
concentrate on developing its online shop
and its upcoming expansion plans in Asia.
need to work with a reliable hosting partner to
keep our website secure and up-and-running 24/7
to ensure our valued customers are satisfied with
the performance of our website.”
EXPERIENCES WITH OTHER HOSTING COMPANIES
John Hardy previously used a shared server offered
by another hosting company. The experience, Chan
said, wasn’t a pleasant one.
“We were attacked by distributed denial-of-service
twice a year, on average, which resulted in
downtime of our site. Those were not fun times,”
said Chan.
To make matters worse, as John Hardy was using a
shared server, sometimes they were not the target
of attack, but fell prey to the code injection from other companies sharing
the same server. As a result, the loading time of the website became much
slower than it should have been.
Chan wanted stability.
“Any downtime of our website will impact our brand image and customers’
loyalty. This puts us under a lot of pressure especially when the online
business is growing so fast. We want to deliver a seamless user experience
and make sure our customers are engaged in the process, which will keep
them coming back,” she said.
To solve the challenges, John Hardy decided to switch to a more reliable
and trusted hosting partner. After conducting its own research and seeking
advice from its web consultant company, John Hardy decided to select
Rackspace in June 2011 based on its product offering, global presence,
server capacity and its renowned Fanatical Support®.
BENEFITS OF RACKSPACE’S DEDICATED HOSTING
Rackspace provides John Hardy with a highly secure hosting experience
with industry-leading SLAs and 24x7x365 Fanatical Support®. Rackspace
also offers the jewelry brand a highly secure and stable platform for online
shopping.
“Partnering with Rackspace has given us much-needed peace of mind.
Whenever an issue occurs, we can quickly and easily get a hold of experts
from Rackspace through its Fanatical Support,” said Chan. “Rackspace
helps ensure that customers and visitors get the fastest access to our
websites by greatly reducing the page load time and thus enhancing their
experience.”
The issue of downtime and virus attacks facing John Hardy has been
mitigated due to Rackspace’s services and, as a result, the company’s
websites have recorded a much lower bounce rate.
In addition to managed hosting services, Rackspace has increased the
infrastructure capacity for John Hardy, which now enables their websites to
manage a high volume of traffic and ensure reliability.
“Every season we have new product launches. Last Christmas in 2011, the
website traffic doubled as a result of our marketing campaign,” recalled
Chan. “With Rackspace, we were able to handle more than 4,000 concurrent visitors during that period.”
Eighty percent of John Hardy’s total traffic is from the United States. The
company hosts its global website out of Rackspace’s data centres in
Chicago and Hong Kong.
Rackspace’s global presence is a perfect fit with John Hardy’s business
expansion plans, Chan said.
“We are expanding into other markets aggressively. As Rackspace’s data
centres are located all over the world, the partnership has strengthened our
capability to expand our business without any hesitation on the IT front,”
said Chan.
WHAT’S NEXT?
John Hardy is planning to add servers and increase its infrastructure
capacity to support its upcoming marketing campaign and business expansion plans.
“Having launched our first physical store in Hong Kong in The Landmark in
September 2011, we will follow with the launch of our website for Hong
Kong shoppers very soon. With the strong track record of Rackspace’s
offering, we believe our trusted hosting partner is more than capable of
giving us further mileage to support our expansion,“ Chan concluded.
Rackspace Hosting Asia Pacific
Regional Office:
9/F, Cambridge House, Taikoo Place, 979 King’s Road, Quarry Bay, Hong Kong
Sales +852 3752 6488 Support +852 3752 6464 fax +852 2805 0070 Website Address: www.rackspace.com.hk
Rackspace Australia
Suite 3, Level 7, 210 George Street, Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
Sales 1800 722 577 Support 1800 421 267 Website Address: www.rackspace.com.au