Zmags is a rich-media marketing platform that enables brands to merge the best features of the web with the successful catalog experience. They have a very popular product that allows brands like Kenneth Cole, Neiman Marcus and Lenovo to gain a new return on their investment in traditional catalogs by bringing them to the web as more than a PDF.
When Jens Karstoft, Zmags’ Co-Founder and Chief Innovation Officer decided to take the catalog fully into the 21st century and pursue his idea of a “dynamic catalog” he knew it would be a distraction to the very capable team driving the flagship product, so he built a new team, and included Eric to manage the technical “heavy lifting”.
This new team, paired with one of Zmags’ most innovative clients as pilots, and led by Jens’ vision, created a whole new catalog experience from top to bottom. From a responsive, tablet-optimized HTML5 front end to a RESTful JSON API on the backend, the system combines truly on-the-fly catalog creation with customizable integration points at every step.
Eric would like to specially thank Jens Karstoft, Tim Wright, Anders Bendtsen, Søren Jensen, Chris Bunk and TR Coffey for their help in making this project happen.
Project Requirements
- High performance
- Cutting-edge front end
- ETL of customer’s product catalog
- Integration with client web services
- Complex business rules for layout and product placement
Technical Highlights
- Dramatic image processing
- Java (Spring) web application
- Strong caching layer with persistence
- Integration with proprietary authentication
- Streamlined (build-free) front-end development cycle