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CUSTOMER STORY

J.Crew Ships Complex Digital Experiences 2x Faster with Builder

Learn how J.Crew revamped its content management system and streamlined workflows with Builder's drag-and-drop interface and flexible integration.

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J.Crew adopted Builder and saw

100%

increase in homepage content creation speed

50%+

increase in global promotion update speed

50%+

increase in content update efficiency

Eliminated late-night deployments with scheduling capabilities

Enhanced creative freedom without compromising functionality

J.Crew Logo

Industry

Retail

Integrations

Salesforce Commerce Cloud

Next.js

About J.Crew
J.Crew is a fashion retailer that offers clothing and accessories for men, women, and children. The brand operates both physical and online stores and has everything from tailored suits to casual everyday wear for all types of customers.
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Implementing Builder was like stepping from the shadows into the light. It gave us the flexibility and speed we needed to stay ahead and empowered our teams to focus on what they do best — creating and innovating.
- Sam Feldman, Manager of Creative Technology at J.Crew.

Challenge

Engineers were spending valuable time on legacy CMS workarounds and basic content updates

Renowned fashion retailer J.Crew needed a better way to manage content across jcrew.com, factory.jcrew.com, and madewell.com. Its previous solution was an in-house, custom-made CMS that required extensive developer input to make even the simplest changes to landing pages and campaigns. The scheduling and preview capabilities were inconsistent across brands, leading to inefficient publishing workflows and manual workarounds.

Sam Feldman, manager of J.Crew's creative technology team, knew they needed a modern solution that would empower creative stakeholders to work efficiently, streamline the QA process, and reduce the burden of manual, time-intensive tasks on developers. 

To keep pace with the company's growth and high-volume content, they would need to:

  • Reduce the burden of manual, time-intensive tasks on developers: J.Crew's developers were previously responsible for manual content updates and routine changes, such as copying directories at midnight before launches.
  • Streamline the QA process: The previous CMS had significant gaps in its preview functionality, making it difficult to accurately test and verify content before publication. This hampered quality assurance efforts and increased the risk of content errors.
  • Empower creative flexibility: Creative flexibility drives J.Crew's marketing success, and the team was concerned that a just-average headless CMS would be too restrictive for their needs. As Senior Engineer Mathew Pustizzi explains: "We need to constantly deliver fresh content to keep customers engaged. For example, we may have to publish multiple hero banners in a short timeframe, each with its own unique creative direction. Coming up with a single set of form fields to support this seemed daunting."
  • Decouple daily publishing needs from the codebase: J.Crew wanted their content to be fully autonomous from the release process, but it wasn’t possible with the available tools and workflow.

Before Builder we were literally copying over directories at midnight before a launch. It was sort of ridiculous and meant we had no real way to test content accurately in a true production state.

- Sam Feldman, Manager of Creative Technology at J.Crew

Solution

Builder’s platform freed up J.Crew’s digital team to focus on value-driving digital content and optimizations

After evaluating multiple options, including Contentful, J.Crew chose Builder's Visual Development Platform for its headless flexibility, visual editing capabilities, and ability to support ad-hoc creative projects. The platform aligned well with J.Crew’s creative-driven culture.

The visual editor's creative flexibility is really the core selling point. It enables a whole world of use cases “out of the box”. With a simple code integration up-front, we unlock tremendous creative freedom without requiring future code changes or releases.

- Mathew Pustizzi, Senior Engineer at J.Crew 

The decision was influenced by several key capabilities:

  • Drag and drop visual editor with real-time preview capabilities for instant visual feedback
  • Flexible component system that preserves creative freedom
  • Integration with Salesforce Commerce Cloud
  • Content scheduling to avoid last-minute stress
  • Structured data models to fall back on when necessary
  • Strong Next.js support and documentation
  • Built-in A/B testing & personalization targeting capabilities
  • Multi-environment support for development, testing, and production across business lines

J.Crew leverages Builder for all content that is not product data or part of the checkout:

  • Homepage iterations, personalizations, and A/B tests
  • Marketing landing pages
  • Global navigation
  • Product listing page content
  • Help and feature pages
  • Promotional content and banners
  • Targeted content variations

Builder's implementation transformed J.Crew’s operations, introducing efficiency, flexibility, and a collaborative environment.

It was an easy fit, and we got a level of convenience where 
we didn’t have to engineer every last piece of the CMS.

– Mathew Pustizzi, Senior Engineer at J.Crew

Results

Doubling Content Capacity While Streamlining Multi-Brand Operations

The introduction of Builder revolutionized workflows, empowering teams to double their capacity and cut production times in half. By automating routine tasks and fostering creativity, Builder transformed what teams could achieve together.

Key Results:

  • Increased Productivity: Builder empowered teams to handle an ever-expanding workload with almost no change to resources.

The volume of tickets has increased, but our deadlines haven’t changed. The asks are more complex than before and we’re able to keep up with demand.

 – Audrey Fleming, Engineer, Creative Technology

  • Enhanced Collaboration: Teams across creative and operations could preview, schedule, and collaborate on updates seamlessly.

It’s been great having everything in one spot. Now, scheduling, targeting, and testing are streamlined.

– Ryan Burniche, Senior Engineer, Creative Technology

  • Empowered Creativity: Visual authoring enabled rapid prototyping and more dynamic homepage layouts.

Builder unlocked more freedom for homepage layouts. I’ve noticed that I can say yes to complex requests more often.

– Angel Espejo, Senior Engineer, Creative Technology


  • Streamlined Scheduling: Campaigns and promotions could be scheduled in advance, reducing stress and enabling better planning.

Black Friday was smoother with Builder. We didn’t have to stay up late to publish and clear cache.

– Sam Feldman, Manager of Creative Technology


Key Features Driving Success:

1. Visual Authoring & Prototyping: Simplified creating and iterating on designs, making non-developers more self-sufficient.

Being able to build pages visually has made it easy to train new team members.

– Olivia Thomas, Analyst, Site Operations

2. Dynamic Targeting: Personalized content by gender, path, and more, improving user experience.

The targeting features are dynamic and powerful. We can prototype and deploy quickly.

– Angel Espejo, Senior Engineer, Creative Technology

3. Streamlined Workflows: Consolidated tools, reducing redundancies and errors.

Everything is in Builder now—images, scripts, scheduling. It’s so much easier.

– Ryan Burniche, Senior Engineer, Creative Technology

With the autonomy provided by Builder’s visual editor and the streamlined QA and content workflows, J.Crew achieved the following results:

  • Up to 100% increase in homepage content capacity
  • Reduced global promotion updates from 45+ minutes to under 20 minutes 
  • Reduced engineering involvement by up to 50% for content updates through visual editing
  • Eliminated late-night deployments with scheduling capabilities
  • Enhanced marketing freedom without compromising functionality

What we can accomplish without ever leaving Builder is really quite impressive. The improvements to the UI and the responsiveness to feedback have made it a tool we rely on daily.

– Sam Feldman, Manager of Creative Technology at J.Crew.

Read more customer stories

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