Eight Years of Digital Platform Evolution with Via Seating
Owning, evolving, and scaling a complex digital platform for sustained growth.
Overview of Partnership
For over eight years, Fifty52 served as the primary digital development partner for Via Seating, a national commercial furniture manufacturer specializing in ergonomic office seating.
During this long-term engagement, we owned and evolved Via Seating’s digital platform, including their primary website and a suite of tightly integrated tools. These systems supported sales, marketing, dealers, designers, and internal operations, and became critical infrastructure for the business.
Rather than delivering one-off projects, our role was to ensure long-term stability, scalability, and continuity across all systems as Via Seating’s product lines, teams, and requirements evolved.
Key Responsibilities & Platform Ownership
- Full ownership of platform architecture, integrations, and long-term maintenance
- Custom WordPress and Laravel application development
- Product configurators and CPQ system design and implementation
- ERP, CMS, and third-party integrations connecting products, pricing, and workflows
- Centralized digital asset and materials management
- Platform stability, performance optimization, and hosting oversight
- Technical debt management and system documentation
- Continuity planning across internal staff and stakeholder changes
Timeline of Evolution
Spec It v1.0
We rebuilt a nonfunctional configurator into a working single-screen experience integrated with Infor CPQ, enabling product configuration and pricing within WordPress.
Website Redesign
We designed and maintained a fully custom WordPress website that served as the central hub for all digital tools. The site integrated with multiple backend systems and evolved continuously over the partnership.
Materials Library
We built a centralized materials library to manage thousands of product images, specifications, and characteristics, ensuring consistency across all platforms.
Spec It v2.0
As Via Seating moved away from Infor, we developed a custom CPQ system and rebuilt the configurator to improve performance, flexibility, and user experience. Cylindo was integrated for real-time 3D visualization.
Custom CPQ System
We replaced Infor entirely with a fully custom CPQ system capable of handling complex pricing logic, product variations, and quoting workflows tailored to Via Seating’s manufacturing needs.
Ergify.com
We designed and developed Ergify.com, a direct-to-consumer ecommerce website for Via Seating’s now-defunct brand, selling chairs directly to end customers.
Textile Compatibility Tool
We built a self-service tool that allowed reps and dealers to check whether specific textiles were compatible with particular chair models, reducing manual checks and support requests.
Pro Portal
We developed a secure professional portal for dealers, reps, and designers to access technical documents, marketing assets, and resources from a centralized location.
Spec It v3.0
In the final phase, we rebuilt the configurator as a standalone Laravel application using Tailwind CSS and Livewire. The platform introduced faster performance, modern UI components, live notifications, and automated PDF generation.
Challenges & Approach
At the start of the engagement, Via Seating faced challenges common to highly configurable manufacturing businesses:
- No functioning product configurator
- Fragmented digital assets and inconsistent data
- High manual workload for quoting, compatibility checks, and support
- Reliance on third-party CPQ systems with limited flexibility
- Performance issues caused by legacy hosting and plugin-heavy WordPress setups
Our approach focused on long-term platform health rather than short-term fixes. We incrementally modernized systems, consolidated tools, reduced dependencies, and documented architecture to ensure stability and continuity as the business evolved.
Results & Impact
- Website performance improved 2–3x after migrating from Apache to a modern Caddy-based hosting environment
- Three generations of product configurators delivered, evolving from WordPress to a standalone Laravel application
- Custom CPQ system eliminated reliance on third-party platforms
- Quoting workflows became significantly faster and more reliable
- Support tickets related to textile compatibility reduced by an estimated 30–40 percent
- Product assets centralized, reducing update time by approximately 70 percent
- Dealers and designers gained faster access to tools and resources through the professional portal
Key Takeaways
- Long-term platform ownership enables better technical decisions and fewer costly rebuilds
- Iterative evolution is more effective than one-time redesigns for complex systems
- Centralizing tools and data improves performance, accuracy, and operational efficiency
- Documentation and continuity planning protect businesses through staff and vendor changes