Arc’teryx Alpine Academy’s Rapid WooCommerce Launch

Background

Arc’teryx Alpine Academy organizes annual mountaineering and skiing camps in Chamonix. When the team wanted an upgrade to their registration site, they faced a common wish list: low cost, responsive design, multilingual support and a launch in record time. DigitalMind, a Swiss agency with WooCommerce expertise, stepped in to deliver a clean experience the client could manage on their own.

The Challenge

The previous registration page would crash under heavy load, refunds were managed via spreadsheets, and assigning participants to teams felt like manual back-and-forth. Courses sold out quickly, and the old system tripped up under simultaneous sign-ups. The new platform had to fix those pain points, work in three languages and go live in a week.

Implementing the Shop

Choosing the Right Tools

Rather than build from scratch, the team selected WordPress with WooCommerce, pairing it with the Peddlar theme to match Arc’teryx’s outdoorsy look. Hosting was scaled to handle peak traffic and SSL was configured for secure payments.

Design and Setup

After theme installation and basic CSS tweaks, a touch-enabled banner was added via WooSlider. With product pages modeled for each course slot, a working cart and checkout were live within days, complete with mobile-first adjustments.

Overcoming Multilingual Hurdles

WPML and the WooCommerce Multilingual add-on handled page translations, but custom checkout-field plugins didn’t sync cleanly. The team opted to register form fields manually in code, then rebuilt email templates to ensure French speakers got French confirmations.

Fine-Tuning Stock and Orders

A late discovery showed that carts stuck in “processing” locked inventory. Without an automatic stock reset, the team cleared those orders across every language manually and updated counts. That extra step kept available spots accurate.

Final Outcomes

At launch the site took 300 orders in two hours with zero downtime. All courses were booked out within 24 hours. The client gained a self-service admin interface and no longer needs developer help for content or course management.