Customer background
Crocs is one of the world’s top non-athletic footwear brands. With over 100 million pairs of shoes sold per year and annual sales surpassing $3 billion, delivering an exceptional customer experience is paramount.
Scott Deitz, the Senior Director of eCommerce Technical Operations, oversees various critical responsibilities, including managing back-end integrations, transactional site operations, and order management system development for Crocs’ global eCommerce sites.
Challenge: Battling automated traffic and fraud
As Crocs intensified its flash sales and collaborated with celebrities like Post Malone and Justin Bieber, the company encountered an unforeseen surge in automated traffic and fraudulent activities.
Scott recalls, “We weren’t expecting the amount of bots and the automated attacks. They got into our APIs before we launched our events. Bots were getting in and placing orders before the products went live. That was a shock to us.”
These incidents disrupted the seamless customer experience that Crocs aimed to provide, prompting Scott and his team to seek a more robust bot defense solution.
Previous infrastructure limitations
Using a rudimentary WAF and an embedded CDN, the team was limited by their tools’ static nature and lack of visibility.
Frustrated, Scott’s team began the search for a new bot mitigation solution. The team quickly learned that Kasada detected and stopped bot attacks that other solutions couldn’t.
“We launched Kasada with our CDN’s bot mitigation in front, then Kasada, and then another instance. We’d see things get through one solution, then hit Kasada, and be blocked.”
“We had definitive proof that Kasada was effective and worked much better than the [other] bot mitigation product,” Scott asserted.
“So we added Kasada alongside our CDN. We had them both for a while and then began running the collabs with Kasada in front.”
Selecting Kasada: Expertise and actionable threat intelligence
Crocs chose Kasada as their bot mitigation solution due to the team. Kasada’s impressive expertise and comprehensive threat intelligence set them apart from competitive solutions.
“Kasada really knows what’s going on in the bot and automated fraud space. The solution, threat intelligence, and technical skills of the team are impressive. We didn’t see any threat intel from other bot mitigation solutions or CDN providers,” Scott said.
“I was impressed with that level of attention and not just, ‘Oh, here’s some software to block bots.’ Instead, the Kasada team proactively said, ‘We saw this,’ and was able to dive into a deeper discussion.”
Results: Kasada eliminated fraudulent activities and enhanced site performance
With Kasada, Crocs was able to cease automated attacks, including scraping, login fraud, carding attacks, and gift card fraud, that the previous anti-bot solution couldn’t.
100x
increase in flash sale traffic
Outcomes:
“At first no one seemed to care about the scraping until we connected it with all these copycat sites showing our exact design. It looks like Crocs, but it wasn’t. We had an analytics team just looking at traffic, and all of it was traffic. They couldn’t decipher what was what. It was just a bunch of traffic that looked legitimate.”
“We fully trust Kasada to mitigate bots and automated fraud, and we don’t see issues with bots anymore.”
Business benefits: Optimized User experience, brand equity, and revenue growth
Kasada’s solution empowers Crocs to execute day-to-day operations and high-profile sales events without concerns about bot attacks.
Scott expressed, “I don’t worry about bots anymore. I can sleep better at night without worrying about the automated attacks. That’s worth something to me. It’s insurance against things. You don’t want to wait until something bad happens.”
Crocs gained the following business benefits as a Kasada customer:
Looking Ahead
Crocs plans to expand Kasada’s protection to new business expansions, such as mobile apps and additional instances.
“Business is still projected to keep going up. We’ll be using Kasada more and more as we grow,” Scott declared.
By leveraging Kasada’s expertise and threat intelligence, Crocs successfully addressed the challenge of automated traffic and fraud, elevating their customer journey, protecting revenue, and reinforcing their brand equity.
“You all have been amazing, from Sam the CEO, the technical team, the account team, the customer success team. Everybody is super responsive and always there when we need you,” Scott concluded.
