Digital platform
Thuasne
Creation of a multilingual web ecosystem to unify communication with each target audience
Specializing in the manufacture of narrow elastic textiles since 1847, Thuasne® is now a major and innovative player that creates and distributes medical devices (braces, bandages, belts, etc.) for healthcare professionals and individuals.
The challenge
Thuasne® already had a unified showcase website dedicated to professionals, available in 15 languages. However, subsidiaries had the freedom to create their own websites.
Thuasne® headquarters therefore called on Vanksen to streamline its costs and efforts; standardizing its content and image was also an important aspect. Bringing all the websites back together within the same ecosystem would also enable them to better manage performance (traffic, SEO, SEA).
Added to this was the brand's desire to target the general public, in addition to its traditional target audience of professionals.
The project and its results
The Thuasne® Group management team is streamlining its digital ecosystem, which includes more than 60 websites for its 15 subsidiaries (countries). Workshops to identify and prioritize internal needs were conducted with a selection of subsidiaries for an initial version of the site: Germany, France, and the United Kingdom.
Each country targets three types of audiences: individuals, professionals, and institutions.
The first phase of the project focused on the graphic design of this new ecosystem in order to apply the most recent graphic charter. The design team therefore created a design system, a reference document enabling us to create a wide range of consistent components.
Production was able to start quickly after the first mock-ups were approved. This agile methodology allowed us to test the site and insert content as we went along to show progress to the various subsidiaries and get them fully on board with the project.
0+components for building pages in autonomy
0websites at launch
0websites: target at 24 months
Our technical approach
From the initial workshops, we recommended a decoupled headless architecture rather than a traditional monolithic CMS. This approach guaranteed:
- maximum flexibility (each component – CMS, e-shop, frontends – is independent and replaceable),
- natural scalability (future addition of new subsidiaries, integration of features such as e-commerce, connection to third-party systems),
- increased robustness thanks to the separation of roles (content, product, interface).
A specialized back-end foundation
- Strapi (headless CMS): structures and centralizes all editorial content. It communicates with frontends via REST/GraphQL API and integrates with DAM for asset management.
- Sylius (headless e-shop): e-commerce engine used in API mode to manage the product catalog, automatically synchronized with the group's PIM. It integrates Redis for performance and exposes data to frontends and ERPs.
- Third-party integrations:
- PIM/DAM for product and media consistency,
- CRM for form collection and tracking,
- ERP for order and inventory flow management.
Modern, multilingual frontends
- Next.js: chosen for its SSR/SSG/ISR capabilities, ideal for multilingual SEO and performance,
- Three separate applications (Corporate, B2C, B2B), each tailored to its target audience but based on a common technical foundation,
- Native internationalization: management of languages and localized content with a single code base.
Infrastructure and performance
- Hosting: Platform.sh, which provides a reproducible and scalable environment,
- CDN & WAF: Fastly, configured with specific VCL rules depending on the application,
- Scalability & security: strict separation of frontends and backends, user role management, application monitoring, GitLab CI/CD pipelines for controlled deployments.
A huge thank you to each and every one of you for your rigorous, committed, and resilient support. The result is commensurate with the challenge: it is structuring and promising for the digital transformation of the Thuasne Group.
While Thuasne® was responsible for writing the content, Vansken SEO experts optimized the product descriptions and the most tactical pages in each language. The goal was to maintain (and improve!) the visibility of the websites for the group's priority keywords when they went live.
A registration section for individual customers was also created, allowing them to access advice tailored to their condition and products.
The Thuasne® group thus benefits from:
- A robust and consistent platform: guaranteed brand consistency across all subsidiaries,
- Optimized performance across the ecosystem: intelligent cache, server-side rendering for SEO, global CDN,
- Flexibility: the ability to add new subsidiaries, e-commerce features, or third-party services without a complete overhaul,
- Sustainability: future-proof architecture, facilitating the group's ongoing digital transition.
The site will continue to evolve in line with user needs and the group's digital transition, notably with new features such as e-commerce (for countries that allow the direct sale of medical devices).
The other subsidiaries (countries) will quickly join this new ecosystem and close their old platforms.
