“Edelwiser - your ski, your design, your community” is the mission statement of Austrian ski-manufacturer Edelwiser. On its website, launched in 2004, users can individually design the surfaces of their skies with the help of a product configurator.

Edelwiser lets users customize skis and thereby show off their own ideas. Once the straight-forward and simple design stage is complete, customers can buy their own skis at an affordable price, costing no more than any standard pair of skis.

Erwin Werdenigg, CEO of the company, comments on a very important point in configurator implementation: “If you develop a toolkit [synonym used for configurators] which nobody can use, there’s no point […]. We very deliberately offered a simple toolkit, very simple symbols, very reduced […]”

An analysis of qualitative interviews with nine Austrian companies employing web-based B2C configurators shows that Edelwiser experienced all the benefits of configurator deployment identified by the theory: competitive differentiation, cost reductions, optimised customer relationships, application of customers’ creativity for product innovation, as well as an increased potential for acquisitions.

Werdenigg states the main advantages of his idea, namely cost-reduction and increased potential for acquisitions: “Direct customer contact via the website should simplify the placement of orders. That’s a big advantage. [… ] since we don’t have to advertise the traditional way [...] the marketing takes place via the community.“

Edelwiser’s bold strategy made it the only company for which all prior expectations of configurator deployment were fulfilled. The company is furthermore in a position to benefit from its customers’ creativity in developing the product. “It’s paradise for us, to listen and feel what customers need [...]. We get a lot of valuable input from customers.”

Company manager Werdenigg defines the principles of successful configurator implementation as follows: “The concept is basically a matter of reducing complexity, increasing fun, being open for developments and strengthening the community.”

The configurator described here and more than 500 further configurators can also be viewed in the
Configurator Database.