Baltika Group celebrating its 95th anniversary this year is a fashion company with a long history operating in the Baltic countries – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Baltika started out as a producer of men’s raincoats and gained popularity with men’s suits mostly in Estonia; today, the company is fully focused on women’s fashion under Ivo Nikkolo brand with collections where timeless classic style is combined with innovative details. Considering the customers, the company creates high-quality garments, accessories and footwear carefully crafted down to the smallest detail. With the purpose to bring high-quality fashion to confident modern women, Baltika has developed from a local producer into one of the most reputable fashion houses in the region.
Baltika started to work with Primend in 2021 as an organisation with about 170 employees at the time. The decision on partnership resulted from the rapidly changing needs of the company requiring modern IT solutions both for the stores and the head office. Today, Primend is the support provider for 22 Ivo Nikkolo stores across all the Baltic countries, as well as the offices in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
When Baltika started to look for an IT partner a few years ago, the three main arguments were lower costs, competence and improved service availability. The company’s own IT specialist only worked in Estonia, whereas Primend offered a possibility to have the same support across the Baltic countries.
For Baltika, the first main criterion for choosing a partner was the possibility to contact user support at the level of the stores and the head office both on working days and in weekends. As Primend does offer such a service, this requirement was already satisfied. They also requested help with all IT-related issues, such as server services, licensing, remote access, etc. At the beginning of the partnership, the main focus was on the infrastructure, so that the company could mainly address the integration of systems and software. After the highly successful first year of partnership in user support service, the second stage included several other activities that required attention, such as analysis of the datacenter, consolidation plan, licensing plan, SQL server optimisation, improvement of backup. Today, after two years of partnership, the servers have been moved from the previous IT partner into Primend Cloud, licensing has been organised and servers consolidated, and the infrastructure is up-to-date.
For Baltika, the first main criterion for choosing a partner was the possibility to contact user support at the level of the stores and the head office both on working days and in weekends. As Primend does offer such a service, this requirement was already satisfied. They also requested help with all IT-related issues, such as server services, licensing, remote access, etc. At the beginning of the partnership, the main focus was on the infrastructure, so that the company could mainly address the integration of systems and software. After the highly successful first year of partnership in user support service, the second stage included several other activities that required attention, such as analysis of the datacenter, consolidation plan, licensing plan, SQL server optimisation, improvement of backup. Today, after two years of partnership, the servers have been moved from the previous IT partner into Primend Cloud, licensing has been organised and servers consolidated, and the infrastructure is up-to-date.
Ahti Laansoo, IT manager of Baltika Group: “We have gained several things from our partnership with Primend, including remarkable financial savings from user support, Microsoft licensing and the server infrastructure. We have also gained better know-how, more experts to support and advise us, as well as support with various issues. The clear and specific invoices of Primend have helped the company keep expenses under control. As it usually happens in new customer relationships, initially the main challenge was mutual understanding. We found a common language rather soon, and today the communication is smooth and efficient. We are definitely ready to continue and develop our partnership, so that we can focus on our in-house strengths even more.”