MONAMIE is one of Kazakhstan's leading perfumery and cosmetics chains, for which ANIART built a perfumery and cosmetics online store from scratch, with a catalog of more than 50,000 products. The company moved online at a time when this e-commerce niche in Kazakhstan was still taking shape — and it did so fast: a full-featured store went live in just 10 weeks, after which we moved into ongoing technical support.
Context: perfumery and cosmetics retail in Kazakhstan
MONAMIE is a large perfumery and cosmetics retail chain centered in Almaty. Over years of offline work, the company built a wide assortment of global brands, a loyal audience and well-honed retail processes: a loyalty bonus program, stock and price accounting, and day-to-day work with suppliers. At a certain point it became clear that the next step in the company's growth lay online — where customers increasingly begin choosing fragrance and cosmetics long before they visit a store.
An early move into e-commerce
What makes this project distinctive is that MONAMIE went online while the perfumery and cosmetics niche in Kazakhstan was still forming. There were almost no ready local blueprints for how a store like this should work: rather than copying someone else's experience, we had to lay a foundation on which the brand's entire online direction would later grow. That meant both freedom in our decisions and a heightened responsibility for each of them, because those decisions would define the company's digital channel for years to come.
The challenge: 50,000 products and a tight deadline
The project's central challenge was scale. A perfumery and cosmetics catalog runs to tens of thousands of items that differ not only by brand and category but by a host of attributes: volume, fragrance type, product line, purpose. The result was more than 50,000 products that had to be not merely uploaded but made easy to search and fast to open. At that volume, any poorly considered detail in navigation or performance is multiplied across the whole assortment.
A huge assortment and response speed
A perfume shopper rarely knows the exact name of the product they want — they search for "something woody," a "gift set," or a specific brand. That makes convenient filters and instant page response critical. A catalog of 50,000+ products puts a serious load on the database: category pages with deep filtering must open quickly even when a shopper combines several conditions at once.
Online, inseparable from the offline chain
The store could not exist apart from the retail chain. Prices and stock live in the company's accounting system and change daily, and the loyalty bonus program had to be shared between online and offline so the customer felt no boundary between the site and the shop. If this data diverges, the shopper sees a wrong price or an out-of-stock item — and trust in a young online store collapses instantly.
A 10-week deadline
And all of this — catalog, filters, integrations and bonuses — had to reach production in 10 weeks. The tight timeline left no room for endless design: the solutions had to be both fast and robust enough to withstand the assortment's further growth.
Approach: launching the online store in 10 weeks
We structured the work to advance several tracks in parallel — catalog, integrations and performance — without losing control under time pressure. Rather than postponing launch until some ideal state, we assembled a coherent store and built in headroom for a large assortment from the start.
- Studied the assortment and the chain's retail processes to understand the logic of categories, attributes and prices.
- Designed the catalog structure and a filter system by brand, category and attributes.
- Chose a PHP and MySQL stack and added Redis to cache the catalog under heavy load.
- Set up synchronization of stock and prices with the chain's accounting system.
- Connected a shared loyalty bonus program across online and offline.
- Launched the store in 10 weeks and moved into ongoing technical support.
| Challenge | Our solution |
|---|---|
| A catalog of 50,000+ products | A well-planned category structure and attribute system |
| Speed across a large assortment | Catalog caching in Redis |
| Up-to-date prices and stock | Synchronization with the chain's accounting system |
| Linking online and offline | A shared loyalty bonus program |
| A tight time to market | Launch in 10 weeks and ongoing support |
What we built
The result is a full-featured perfumery and cosmetics online store that works from day one as part of the retail chain rather than a standalone showcase site. Here are the product's key modules.
50,000+ catalog
A vast assortment of fragrance and cosmetics under one logic of categories and attributes.
Smart filters
Selection by brand, category and attributes for fast product discovery.
Bonus program
A single loyalty program shared with the company's retail chain.
Synchronization
Up-to-date prices and stock from the chain's accounting system with no manual updates.
Smart catalog filters
Filters are the main navigation tool in a large catalog. We made sure a shopper could narrow 50,000 items down to a few relevant ones in seconds, combining conditions in any order.
- filtering by brand — from mass market to niche lines;
- filtering by category — fragrance, skincare, decorative cosmetics;
- filtering by product attributes — volume, type, purpose;
- combining several conditions at once with no loss of speed.
A single bonus program
The bonus program became the bridge between the site and the retail chain. It is shared across online and offline, so the customer stays inside one loyalty system regardless of where they buy. For a young online store that is an important argument: shoppers arrive online already familiar with the bonus mechanics.
Architecture and technology
The project is built on a PHP, MySQL and Redis stack. PHP and MySQL handle the store's business logic and store the 50,000+ product catalog, while Redis solves the key problem of a large assortment — speed. Caching the catalog in Redis makes it possible to serve heavy category pages and filtering results without repeated expensive database queries, so the store stays responsive even under deep filtering.
Synchronization with the accounting system
To make online and offline speak the same language, we connected the store to the chain's accounting system. Stock and prices flow from it automatically, and loyalty bonuses work as a single program. This removes manual updates and guarantees the shopper sees current data.
| Data | Source | How it works online |
|---|---|---|
| Product stock | Chain's accounting system | Synchronized; the shopper sees real availability |
| Prices | Chain's accounting system | Updated automatically, with no manual edits |
| Loyalty bonuses | Shared chain program | Earned and spent both online and offline |
Results
The main result: MONAMIE gained a full-fledged online channel in a segment where, at launch, ready-made solutions barely existed. A store of 50,000+ products reached production in 10 weeks, with smart filters, a shared bonus program and synchronization with the chain's accounting system. The project now lives in ongoing technical support, and changes are delivered promptly.
Changes are delivered promptly.Maya Sokolska, MONAMIE
Ongoing support means the store does not freeze after launch: the assortment expands, new brands and promotions appear, and the technical team reacts quickly to the needs of the business. This model — a fast start plus reliable support — proved optimal for a niche that is growing fast.
If you are planning to bring a large retail assortment online and want to do it quickly without sacrificing quality, we can help you make that journey. Browse our other projects or get in touch to discuss your online store.
