Carrera y Carrera

Logicalis provides end-to-end support for Carrera y Carrera’s first retail store in Asia

About Carrera y Carrera

Carrera y Carrera (CYC) is an internationally renowned Spanish jewelry company headquartered in San Agustin de Guadalix, Madrid. Its origins date back to 1885 when it first started as a small jewelry workshop by Saturio Esteban Carrera.

The CYC brand was created during the 70s by the founder’s grandsons Manuel and Juan Jose Carrera and since then, has expanded to overseas markets in USA, Eastern Europe, Russia and recently China.

Today CYC offers rings, wedding bands, pendants, necklaces, earrings, bracelets, watches, cufflinks, and novelties and exports 70% of its products to over 60 countries worldwide. The company has over 250 sales outlets across five continents, between its own shops and sole distributors, including the prestigious Neiman Marcus stores in the US. Famous personalities who have worn the brand include Eugena Silva, Jennifer Lopez, Katy Perry, Demi Moore, Lady GaGa and Olivia Wilde.

Building an IT infrastructure for regional expansion

The Asia Pacific is now the largest target market for luxury brands with the region already accounting for one third of the world’s middle class and projected to double by 2030.

To leverage the region’s increasing appetite for luxury products, CYC intends to aggressively expand into China and the Asia Pacific markets. The company’s first regional store and subsidiary was opened in Macau in 2014. Over the next year, CYC plans to grow its network of stores across more high-quality retail locations in cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Singapore.

The opening of the Macau boutique required the support of a skilled IT partner to build the company’s first branch network in the region.  “We wanted to consolidate the network equipment under a single vendor so as to streamline our IT and improve efficiency and flexibility in communications,” said Enriqueta Pedron, an IT spokesperson for CYC.

After studying proposals and evaluating between two providers, Logicalis was picked by CYC as the systems integrator to configure and implement the Macau retail store’s IT network based on a Cisco infrastructure in October 2014.

“Logicalis had the technical knowledge and experience, and had an advantage as they previously provided similar support and services to another entertainment company in Macau," said Pedron.

“Logicalis was also chosen as they provided us excellent support and consultation to address our needs. They were fast and proactive in their answers and offered the quality of services that we required,” she added.

Logicalis studied CYC’s requirements, with a key objective of ensuring secure connectivity with the company’s head office in Madrid. Network and IT equipment recommended for the store included a number of network devices such as the Cisco 1941 integrated service router, 2960 switch and 2702i access point, as well as Canon and HP printers, Dell laptops and other office appliances. The network was connected to a number of retail store applications and the POS system.

Logicalis managed the network roll-out from end-to-end, providing services that range from consultation, procurement, implementation, testing, co-ordination with the service provider to on-site support. The installation was duly completed within a month with no disruption to the store operations.

Benefits

The store’s integrated branch services router is equipped with modules that allow CYC to decouple the deployment of hardware and software, providing a stable technology foundation for the store to quickly adapt to evolving network requirements. Using a single vendor network infrastructure enabled CYC to simplify the IT and communications environment by removing any interoperability issues.

“We can now centrally manage our resources and there is seamless and uninterrupted communications among all our staff. This increases efficiency and lowers the number of hours running the network and reduces our cost of operations.

“With retail floor space being limited, the smaller footprint of the network equipment helps us to reduce our rack space for routing, switching, computing and voice services. Our energy and telecommunications costs are also lower,” said Pedron.

Going forward, the network is future-proof – being scalable and architected to allow the next phase of branch-office evolution. For example, CYC can add features such as collaboration, virtualisation, video surveillance, integrated messaging and wireless applications whenever required.

The Macau network set up by Logicalis is unlikely to be a standalone project. It sets the framework for other branch networks for the region. CYC can replicate a similar architecture when it expands to more locations, cutting down on the learning curve and accelerating time to market.

“We are always looking for solutions that will support our future development and growing expansion into Asia. It would be practical to continue using the same platform. Both Cisco and Logicalis’ regional presence make them ideal partners for us,” said Pedron.