169 years after its launch, Steinway & Sons modernises its luxury retail offering with a dedicated offshore development team |

The challenge

Heritage brand to adapt to new technology

Steinway & Sons is renowned for manufacturing pianos beloved by professional musicians around the world. This heritage brand has always been number one. However, as consumer behaviour changes and technology evolves, even the most enduring brands must adapt to retain their positions.

This led Steinway & Sons to approach WeAssemble. The brand was changing how it sold to customers, with new launches on the horizon ranging from consumer-facing apps to luxury e-commerce capabilities. Without an existing development team to lean on, Steinway sought a dedicated development team to build its tech-based products. That meant recruiting for multiple complex roles, something that would take a significant amount of time and money through conventional means.

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

Steinway & Sons

Location: London, United Kingdom
Industry: Luxury e-commerce
Duration: 1 year
Team size: 25 experts
Technologies used: MERN (MongoDb, Express, ReactJs, NodeJs)

The solution

A team for setting up e-commerce

After meeting Craig Terry, Steinway & Sons’ Managing Director, via a referral, we sat down to discuss their requirements. It immediately became clear that Steinway & Sons needed a modern solution that would 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.

Recruitment

Entire project team!

It was critical when building Steinway & Son’s dedicated offshore team that we ensure each new recruit 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 recruited talented and dedicated developers with expertise in a range of technologies from India. Our in-house recruitment team drew upon our extensive pool of existing resource and scoured recruitment sites to find 25 incredible managers and engineers who were well-suited to work as part of Steinway & Sons’ unique and flexible team. The roles we recruited included product managers, project managers, front-end developers, back-end developers, manual QAs, testing automation engineers and DevOp specialists.

Set up

dedicated offshore development centre

Steinway’s new team required a space to work from, so we located and organised the rent of a dedicated offshore development centre based 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 from 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.

Conscious collaboration

WeAssemble's project managers & Steinway's management team

WeAssemble guided both the client and their new development team through the onboarding process, managing payroll, organising training and supporting their acclimatisation to Steinway’s ways of working.

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 kept in regular communication with the Steinway team to deliver project updates and take on feedback. In the UK, an internal project manager was assigned to lead the development team, who also worked closely with the marketing team to inform project priorities.

As Steinway was impressed with the development team’s performance, they soon integrated with the company’s retail, finance and sales team, working with key stakeholders to deliver top-quality products.

Achievement spotlight
Team was built efficiently, avoiding a recruitment bottleneck

Successfully onboarded a team with the sensitivity to work with a business with a unique set of challenges

Offered a modern solution that sourced the right people, not just the most talented

The results

Business transformation with effective team building

Day to day, the dedicated development team is responsible for maintaining the Steinway.co.uk website and server, which includes the creation of new tools and components on an ad-hoc basis.

The Steinway & Sons UK website processes thousands of pounds of revenue every day, carrying out high-value transactions without a hitch. With a wide range of resources available to customers managed by the offshore team, hundreds of leads are generated each month.

Thanks to its dedicated team, Steinway & Sons has re-established itself as a powerhouse brand in the 21st century. It continues to release state-of-the-art apps and technologies created by its offshore team. Founded 169 years ago, Steinway has inspired musicians for many generations and with the help of its future-focused development team, will continue to endure for many more.

Let’s work together

to assemble your low-risk, high-calibre offshore development team.