G&G Glamour is the official distributor of the world's leading luxury brands in Kazakhstan, for which ANIART built a native mobile app for its online store on iOS and Android. The company runs 10 boutiques in Almaty and Nur-Sultan and the online store ggonline.kz with more than 2,000 products; over 85% of customers browsed on a smartphone — and the mobile browser journey had become the bottleneck of an otherwise premium service.
Context: luxury retail and a digital storefront in Kazakhstan
G&G Glamour is the official representative of brands such as MaxMara, Fendi, Marina Rinaldi, Sergio Rossi, Simonetta Ravizza and Weekend MaxMara. For over 18 years the company has shaped the high-fashion market of Kazakhstan: ten boutiques in the country's two largest cities, a recognizable service standard, and an audience used to attention at every stage — from the first consultation to after-sales care.
The online channel ggonline.kz already worked as a full store: a catalog of more than 2,000 items and a responsive mobile version. But a digital storefront of this class has to match the offline experience — and at G&G Glamour that experience is premium by default. For a luxury shopper, convenience and speed are not a secondary detail but part of the product itself.
The challenge: 85% mobile traffic — and no app
Analytics made the picture obvious: over 85% of visitors came to the store from a smartphone. Yet there was no dedicated app, and this entire audience went through the mobile browser — opening tabs, logging in again, manually searching for the page they needed. For a luxury-segment buyer, every extra step is a reason to postpone the purchase "for later" — which often never comes.
At the same time the business carried a constant communication cost: service and marketing messages were sent by SMS, and each message in Kazakhstan cost between $0.35 and $0.65. At scale this became a noticeable expense — with no guarantee the customer would even open the message.
Why classic native development didn't fit
The obvious solution — commissioning two full native apps — ran into timeline and budget. Classic development of separate iOS and Android apps would have taken 10–12 months and cost as much as two independent products. For a seasonal fashion business, that horizon meant missing at least several collections, and the app itself risked going stale before release.
The approach: a hybrid app in two months
Instead of building a mobile product from scratch, we bet on the existing responsive version of the store as a single source of truth. The native apps wrap the mobile site in a JavaScript framework: one codebase with platform-specific tweaks for iOS and Android. This gave the client full apps in the stores without duplicating catalog, cart and checkout logic — and all of it in two months.
- Analyzed mobile analytics and shopper behavior, pinpointing the bottlenecks of the browser journey.
- Chose a hybrid architecture: a single codebase on top of the responsive site instead of two separate native apps.
- Optimized server capacity and image loading for the app's load profile.
- Connected a push-notification infrastructure in place of SMS and tied it to the ERP accounting system.
- Built and published the apps to the App Store and Play Market, going through the full moderation cycle.
What the client got
The finished product has two parts: a convenient app for the shopper and a flexible communication tool for marketing. Both run on top of the same catalog of more than 2,000 products.
The shopper app
- a personal account with purchase history and personalized recommendations;
- product comparison and a favorites list;
- multi-stage order tracking;
- seamless checkout across a catalog of 2,000+ items;
- search and easy navigation in a native interface.
Push infrastructure and admin panel
Campaign scenarios
Scheduled, behavioral and abandoned-cart triggers — instead of costly SMS.
Audience segmentation
Splitting authorized and unauthorized users for precise campaigns.
Flexible notifications
Headline, description, product links, and — on Android — custom sound and background.
Managed from a phone
The admin panel is available on mobile; marketing runs campaigns without developers.
Synchronization between the site and the app happens automatically, so content and prices are always current. Day-to-day operation requires no programmers — the client's team manages everything on its own.
Architecture and technology
At the core of the project is a PHP and MySQL stack, the same one that already powered ggonline.kz. The native shells for iOS and Android are built on a single JavaScript codebase with platform-specific tweaks, while product, order and customer data synchronize with the ERP system. One codebase instead of two separate apps means both faster development and cheaper maintenance. Separately, we optimized server capacity and image loading so the app stays fast under peak load.
Build and release on the App Store and Play Market
The iOS version was built in Xcode and taken through Apple's full moderation cycle: personal verification calls, automatic malware scanning, real-world testing of the app by an Apple staff member acting as a customer, and several rounds of adjustments to requirements that were clarified along the way. The Android version went through publication on the Play Market. In the end, both apps were approved and became available to users in the stores.
| Criterion | Classic native build | Our approach |
|---|---|---|
| Timeline | 10–12 months | 2 months |
| Budget | Full cost of two separate apps | 8–10× less |
| Updates | Through App Store / Google Play releases | Instantly, together with the site |
| Maintenance | A dedicated dev team | No developers needed |
Implementation results
Replacing SMS with push notifications not only removed the per-message cost, it also gave marketing a controllable channel with scenarios and segmentation. Here is how the two communication models compare.
| Metric | SMS campaigns | Push notifications |
|---|---|---|
| Cost per message | $0.35–0.65 each | No per-message billing |
| Monthly spend | A constant expense | $300+ saved per month |
| Scenarios | Limited | Scheduled, behavioral, abandoned cart |
| Segmentation | None | Authorized / unauthorized |
Next on the roadmap: analytics on push-notification effectiveness and the ability to place orders offline when the connection is unstable.
If your business already sees mobile traffic dominate but has no dedicated app yet, we can help you take the same path quickly and cost-effectively. Explore our other projects or get in touch to discuss yours.
