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Steinway & Sons modernises luxury offering with offshore team

Steinway & Sons modernises luxury offering with offshore team

E-commerce

THE CHALLENGE

A modern approach to building teams

Steinway & Sons is renowned for being the most popular piano manufacturer among professional musicians. However, as consumer behaviour changes and technology evolves, even the most enduring brands must adapt to retain their positions.

Steinway & Sons approached WeAssemble to support its evolution, with new launches from consumer-facing apps to luxury e-commerce capabilities on the horizon. Steinway lacked existing development resources and sought a dedicated development team to build its tech products. That meant recruiting for multiple roles, which would take a significant amount of time and money through conventional means.

This 169-year-old brand required a modern resource-building approach to create an efficient, cost-effective team that could work across its developing tech stack.

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Craig Terry, Managing Director at Steinway & Sons
"WeAssemble guided both the partner and their new development team through the onboarding process. We ran operations on their behalf, building a ​​dedicated workspace filled with..."
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About the Steinway & Sons partner Weassemble

About the partner

About the Steinway & Sons partner Weassemble

World-renowned piano manufacturer Steinway & Sons is the number-one choice for 19 out of 20 concert pianists.

Steinway.co.uk offers a luxury online experience for UK-based musicians, where customers can discover their perfect instrument, find tips for piano maintenance and access additional services.

 

INDUSTRY: Luxury E-commerce
LOCATION: London, United Kingdom

The solution

After meeting Craig Terry, Steinway & Sons’ Managing Director, we discussed their requirements. It immediately became clear that Steinway & Sons needed a modern solution to challenge the heritage brand and help them stand out on the world stage.

After taking the time to understand Steinway & Son’s unique challenges, we kicked off WeAssemble’s simple yet effective Filtered Talent process, which aims to only hire from the top 3% of developers in India.

DURATION: 2 years
TEAM SIZE: 25 experts

TECHNOLOGIES: MERN MongoDb ReactJs NodeJs

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App functionality

E-commerce
Marketing functions
Customisable product flow
CRM
E-commerce

E-commerce platform for high-value luxury items, integrating with payment gateways

Marketing functions

Marketing functions, such as customisable landing pages to enable improved conversion rates for marketing campaigns

Customisable product flow

Customisable product flow, including filters and a search engine to simplify product discovery

CRM

Direct CRM integration, including Microsoft Dynamic-driven lead form generation to improve data collection and conversion rates

RECRUITMENT

Conscious collaboration

Steinway and sons case by Weassemble

It was critical when building Steinway & Son’s dedicated offshore team that we ensure each new team member was not only talented but equipped to deal with the unique set of challenges that comes with working with a historically traditional business.

Based on these requirements, we built Steinway’s offshore team full of talented and dedicated developers with expertise in a range of technologies from India. Our in-house talent specialist team used our six-step Filtered Talent process to carefully evaluate each candidate based on their technical skills, experience, cultural fit, and other relevant criteria.

They conducted thorough assessments, including phone interviews, technical tests, and technical interviews with senior professionals to identify the most qualified and capable individuals for the roles on offer. The roles we recruited included product managers, project managers, front-end developers, back-end developers, manual QAs, testing automation engineers and DevOps specialists.

Steinway and sons case by Weassemble

Steinway’s set up

Steinway had specific compliance requirements that it was critical their team adhered to, from equipment to processes and office security, we matched these requirements by setting the team up in an office in Mumbai. Before the engineers moved in, we made sure the space was fully branded with Steinway’s logo and equipped with top-of-the-line technology. Giving their new team a branded and comfortable place to work helped their specialists feel part of the Steinway family. Mumbai is a hub of innovation in technology, with this new office ensuring Steinway’s developers are immersed in this culture.

01
Achievement spotlight
Accelerated time to market for numerous Steinway UK tech products
02
Built a stable team with high retainment — 24 months into the engagement, we have achieved close to zero churn
03
Prioritised communication with a UK-based account team with the sensitivity to work with a business with a unique set of challenges

THE RESULTS

Steinway saves six figures on development resources with offshoring

Two years into our engagement, the team is now Steinway UK’s dedicated offshore development team, managing all aspects of the Steinway UK product pipeline. This includes maintaining the Steinway.co.uk website and server, which includes the creation of new tools and components on an ad-hoc basis.

This has saved Steinway approximately £300k on development resources to date when compared to hiring onshore, and they have helped hundreds of leads to be generated each month from new tech offerings.

The team has scaled up and down based on Steinway’s strategic requirements giving the Steinway team the flexibility they need.

Customer review

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Craig Terry, Managing Director at Steinway & Sons
United Kingdom
United Kingdom
REVIEW VERIFIED BY CLUTCH AND MATCHES THE CUSTOMER’S WORDS

WeAssemble guided both the partner and their new development team through the onboarding process. We ran operations on their behalf, building a ​​dedicated workspace filled with high-spec equipment, fully managed administration and HR, and took a data-driven approach with regular reporting.

Open communication is key to keeping progress moving, so this was a priority for the new dedicated team and Steinway’s existing teams. In India, the product and project managers regularly communicated with the Steinway team to deliver project updates and take on feedback. What’s more, a dedicated UK-based account team was on-hand throughout the process to work closely with the marketing team to inform project priorities and smooth over any communication issues.

Rated:
5

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