Who’s Involved?
We worked closely with Orange Bikes for over ten years.
The project was a collaboration with Hitman who were responsible for all aspects of the web design and branding as well as the management of Orange Bike's online presence.
This e-commerce website was directly linked to their factory system which was built and designed by Climbing Turn.
What was Needed?
Our involvement has been in two main areas:
- Maintaining and developing the website which is built on top of the ExpressionEngine Content Management System. This work includes writing and maintaining a major bespoke add-on which pulls data from their Factory Administration System.
- Maintaining and developing their custom back-office Factory Management software which is used by the staff in the office and factory to administer the specification and production of their product range.
Factory Management System
Their range of mountain, gravel, road and other bikes can be customised to suit each customer and the management of these available sizes, colours and options is controlled by the Factory Software. Many bikes in their range are built to order and the software helps them to manage this process.
The system has these notable features, amongst many others:
- Create specifications for each bike in their product range including which options are available for each range.
- Record customer orders for bikes, including which options they have selected.
- Generate factory build sheets for each order.
- Manage the specification of components and options.
- Manage the distribution including automated emails to dealers regarding dispatch.
- Management of the Orange Bikes Dealerships.
- Generation of sales reports.
- Data feeds from the factory system to the website.
The system was under constant development as their business changed and our role was to design and develop the software to keep on top of these changes.
Website
We were the lead developers for the Orange Bikes website.
The website was based on the ExpressionEngine CMS (EECMS).
Our involvement with the website was:
- Development of the page templates
- Development and maintenance of a major ExpressionEngine add-on which retrieves data from the Factory Management System and makes it available to ExpressionEngine's templates to display the model range and dealer information.
- Development of other custom add-ons eg: Geo Location
- Creating new functionality and features such as the "Bike Builder" and dealer management
- Integration of the dealers area with their back-office systems