Discovering life’s rituals

Since their start in 2000, Rituals opened more than 670 stores in 27 countries around the globe - all offering clients a smarter, more peaceful retail environment. Customers can enjoy a cup of tea as they shop for skin care, candles, makeup, shower products and more.

While embracing their foundation that’s based on natural wellness from the past, Rituals recognized that including modern technology in both their corporate and retail environments would elevate their offering, now and into the future. In came Apple.

In the fall of 2016, Rituals kicked off their Apple implementation with a pilot of 20 MacBook devices in their corporate headquarters. Feedback on the ease of use, flexibility and device stability confirmed the decision to move forward - a transition that moved the entire company from PC to Mac. Over the course of the following year, Rituals deployed 650 MacBook, 700 iPad, 650 iPhone and 1,500 iPod devices across the company.

Unhappy with their mobile device management solution (MDM), and its inability to provide zero-day support for Apple releases, they began shopping for a new tool and discovered Jamf. “We made the choice of Jamf, because it’s one solution for all of our devices. And we now only use Apple in our company,” Van der Zwaan said. “Jamf was the perfect solution for Rituals. It fits the whole picture.”

During the transition, every Rituals employee moved from a PC to either a MacBook or iPad. They also received an iPhone. While shifting the entire company to an Apple-based environment was no small feat, Van der Zwaan said setting up a cloud-hosted instance with Jamf initiated services that allowed them to elevate their internal hardware offering to employees while also providing a foundation to support their rapid growth. “Jamf was really helpful at giving us the right support and guidance,” he said. “We also had the same goal, and Jamf was the success factor of our implementation. We really enjoyed it.”

While the success of Rituals starts behind the Mac at their headquarters, it comes to life in their shops around the world. Each retail location utilizes one iPad and two iPods.

“The store would look very different without Apple products. It would be much harder for us to work with more paper, and it would cost more time,” said Tessa Antoni, retail coordinator, Rituals. “The employees are very flexible with their iPads. They don’t need to go to their back offices all of the time. Overall, these devices created a better experience for everyone.”

Supporting the company’s movement to remain paperless, store employees use the iPad devices to:

• Watch corporate training sessions to remain in constant compliance with corporate policies and procedures.
• Read the company newsletter as a way to stay informed of important news and updates.
• Order products and maintain sufficient and accurate store inventory.

The iPod devices aid in the overall efficiency of the Rituals retail locations by:

• Providing customers with a mobile point of sale so they don’t have to stand in line to make a purchase.
• Pairing with a skin analyzer to provide customized skin care recommendations to customers.
• Scanning products as they arrive, eliminating the room for inventory errors.

During a time when health and wellness continue to see increased popularity, it’s no surprise that Rituals, a brand rooted in self care, continues to see rapid growth around the world. Dick Schornagel, the head of ICT at Rituals, said properly supporting their Apple implementation is paramount to supporting this expansion.

He said, “We want to have a robust environment, so we can’t afford to have downtime, both in the retail locations, and also in the headquarters throughout the countries where we don’t have a physical presence.”

Nico Wartenbergh, chief technology officer, Rituals, agreed saying Jamf’s solid infrastructure, along with its extensive capabilities, is instrumental in facilitating their digital strategy that reaches their widespread implementation. “We should have a clear view of those devices,” he said. “We should be able to wipe them, to update them and to install them every moment of the day, in every country. So we needed a good, global mobile device management tool.”

Using Jamf Pro not only allows Rituals to manage their Apple implementation, but more importantly, it gives them the ability to more effectively and efficiently help customers find moments of bliss and develop their own rituals.