Case Study: Hobbs achieves 100% uptime during peak sales and 20% infrastructure reduction with Netacea Virtual Waiting Room

Hobbs - Customer Case Study

Hobbs, a contemporary British fashion retailer with over 140 UK and Ireland stores, was experiencing severe website slowdowns and crashes during peak sales events as thousands of visitors flocked to sales previews and new lines. Scaling infrastructure to handle 15–20x traffic was cost-prohibitive, so Hobbs turned to Netacea and its Virtual Waiting Room to find a more intelligent solution.

Netacea implemented its Virtual Waiting Room to monitor traffic and automatically defer excess visitors to a branded, FIFO queue showing position and wait time, letting users enter in order as capacity becomes available. The Netacea solution delivered rapid integration, prevented slowdowns and outages during major events (100% uptime during peak loads), allowed Hobbs to right-size its platform and decommission infrastructure (reducing capacity by 20%), and freed staff from reactive firefighting.

Hobbs

Sharon Lowrie

Technical and Business Change Director