Fast White Cat

Please describe your company and your position there.

4F is a Polish sport-fashion clothing Brand. Also, we’re proud Sponsor of eight Olympic Comettees and we deliver clothes, shoes and accessories to Olympic Sportsmans. I’m responsible for Online Channels of distribution of our products in every markets.

For what projects/services did your company hire Fast White Cat, and what were your goals?

We started our cooperation in the end od 2017 and in the first step we planned to remove our existing online shop from the old e-commerce engine to Magento2 without resignation of any functionalities that we already had. Moreover FWC have to migrate the whole data from our old e-shop and launch this project on the production as seamless as it possible because we couldn’t afford to stop the online sale for a long time.

After this stage of a project we countinue our cooperation on maintenance and development of this online shop.

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We launched a tender for this project and to win this tender offerer had to comply several demands (such as: maximum cost for this project, accept our deadline, scope for MVP and so on). FWC won this competition.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

FWC was responsible for preparing mockups, front-end and back-end works and – also for the administration of this project on AWS Cloud.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We have two dedicated teams (each includes Project Manager, TechLead, 2 Front-end Developers, Back-end Developer, DevOps (on the part time), QA and - if necessary - Business Solution Analyst). Also I cooperate with 2 Members of the Board.

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

From my point of view the best evidence for productivity and engagement of FWC is to check the website 4f.com.pl and convince itself that project has an impressive growth and uses the newest technology stack.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

All the time we have dedicated team who work for us in a full-time. Apart of the weekly meetings we have ongoing contact in the particular tasks. We use JIRA, Confluence, Google Meets and MS Teams and also email and phone calls (when it necessary).

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

The biggest advantage of FWC is the business approach for the projects and high ability to the flexible approach for any change requests which our project demands.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

In every Company there is a space for improvement and the same goes to the FWC. In my opinion FWC should focus on the quality tests of the development solutions (before deploying on UAT) and should prepare more accurate estimates (when we talk about the estimated deadline) about some tasks.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Tchibo is a German coffee maker. We are also responsible for non-foods. I am a business developer for the Cafissimo brand, which is a single-portion coffee maker. I work within the Polish subsidiary of the company.

What challenge were you trying to address with Fast White Cat?

We wanted to increase the distribution of Cafissimo within external channels, outside of our own shops and online store. The biggest e-commerce site in Poland is Allegro, which is responsible for 50% of all online sales in the country.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Fast White Cat has been responsible for developing the Cafissimo listing on Allegro, from warehousing to customer communications. Fast White Cat's team has been responsive to our feedback and had good proposals for increasing our online business on an external channel.

How did you come to work with Fast White Cat?

The B2B [business-to-business] development manager from my team found Fast White Cat. I only joined the company several months after this happened.

How much have you invested with Fast White Cat?

The cost of Fast White Cat's services has been between $50,000 and $100,000. We have worked with Fast White Cat on several projects. They receive a commission for each sale generated, for coffee, machinery, and accessories.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Fast White Cat in May 2015. We plan to work with Fast White Cat for the foreseeable future. I'm confident that the collaboration will be good, based on their performance and from a cost perspective.

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

We have opened up a new project for Cafissimo during the previous months, organizing a promotion with the biggest telecom provider in Poland, T-Mobile. We sent 600,000 direct emails to T-Mobile customers, as well as created material describing the Cafissimo system to new consumers. Fast White Cat was quick to deliver on the online side of the campaign, only taking 6 weeks for the whole process. I'm not an IT person, but I knew exactly what I wanted to build. Fast White Cat was able to transfer our message to the website, achieving a good-looking result. It was one of the best promotions we've had in 2016, and Fast White Cat was one of the major solution holders.

How did Fast White Cat perform from a project management standpoint?

During our project, the team worked 12-hour days and remained in contact with us daily.

What did you find most impressive about Fast White Cat?

Fast White Cat is a quick and responsive team, able to develop its own ideas. A few months ago, they were making business through a commission model, but Fast White Cat also offered marketing support, advising us on how to do business online. The follow-up after our latest project was finished was beyond all our expectations. Fast White Cat was responsible for a majority of this success.

Are there any areas Fast White Cat could improve?

When working online, we expect partners to be creative and active, identifying what our competition is doing and developing strategies based on that. I would expect Fast White Cat to be more active in some areas, but I'm very comfortable with how they approach our work.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are a fashion company selling garments for women 45 years old and older. We have 140 stores in Poland and an e-store. I am the owner.

What challenge were you trying to address with Fast White Cat?

When we started our company 20 years ago, we wanted to have an e-store page along with a website for our brand. We also wanted a company that could warehouse our products and send them to our customers.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Fast White Cat, with their tools and knowledge, built our site, attracted clients, and made an online presence for our company. We treated them as one of our stores, so we sent them garments which they managed in their warehouse and then send directly to customers.

How did you come to work with Fast White Cat?

We found them at an e-commerce conference where they gave a presentation.

How much have you invested with Fast White Cat?

We gave them a commission on the sales from the e-store, depending on the quantity of garments sold that we sent to them.

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

Regarding the design of the website, they did what we wanted. Fast White Cat is very open-minded, flexible, and gave their ideas. They do well in taking care of issues.

How did Fast White Cat perform from a project management standpoint?

Some parts of the project were not executed quickly such as when we decided to introduce something new to the website but they were very reactive about other stuff, too. However, the organization of their work was quick, especially with the warehouse.

What did you find most impressive about Fast White Cat?

They are very familiar with all the tools created for our website, affiliations, and all its other pages.

Are there any areas Fast White Cat could improve?

Compared to our other stores, it takes them an extra week to receive the garments, causing photos of the products to be delayed on the website.