That is the experience of Union Swiss, the company behind Bio-Oil, which recently celebrated the skincare brand's 35th anniversary. Today, Bio-Oil is sold across markets around the world, supported by a global distributor network that needs to stay connected to the latest marketing activity, company news, product information and business performance.
A mobile application developed in partnership with Bluegrass Digital has become a central part of how Union Swiss manages that communication.
From an Instagram-inspired concept to a global communications platform
The starting point was a more contemporary way to communicate with distributors across 163 countries. The concept was inspired by the simplicity and familiarity of Instagram, but the application needed a more corporate approach suited to a global business environment.
The result was a B2B mobile application that gave distributors access to brand content, news and information while creating a sense of connection across markets.
The original vision also included a community element. Distributors could share images and videos of their local marketing activity, giving colleagues in other markets an opportunity to see what was working elsewhere and draw inspiration from it.
Over time, however, the role of the platform changed. The application evolved from a more open, social-style engagement platform into a structured communication channel, with selected Union Swiss team members publishing updates that could be distributed directly to the wider network.
For a global consumer brand, getting a marketing message from a central team into multiple markets is a complex exercise. Campaigns need to be communicated consistently, while local teams and distributors need the information and direction to bring those campaigns to life in their own markets.
There is a constant balance between protecting global brand consistency and giving individual markets what they need to execute effectively.
For Union Swiss, the app has become a central channel for managing that flow of information, connecting the global brand with the distributor network responsible for taking it into local markets.
Today, the platform is used to communicate company updates, achievements, marketing activity and performance information to distributors around the world.
Keeping the platform fit for purpose
As the platform became increasingly embedded in the business, the focus shifted from simply adding functionality to maintaining the underlying technology that supports it.
Mobile operating systems change. Development frameworks are updated. Dependencies become outdated. Security requirements evolve. New devices and media formats introduce new technical considerations.
For any long-lived digital product, these changes can create increasing complexity. In Bio-Oil's case, ongoing development provided an opportunity to address that complexity and strengthen the technical foundations of the application.
When Bluegrass Digital’s Development Team Lead, Dawie Pritchard, joined the project, one of the biggest technical risks he identified was platform fragility. Over time, the application had accumulated a significant number of native dependencies, custom native configurations and build pipeline dependencies. This meant that routine changes could carry more risk than they should.
"The real risk was not one broken feature, but a system that had become expensive to evolve," says Pritchard.
The most complex modernisation exercise was the migration to Expo's Continuous Native Generation (CNG) approach. The work touched more than a hundred native files and required the team to replace or rework major integrations covering areas such as camera functionality, file systems, permissions, splash handling, background tasks, configuration and image tooling.
The migration was more than a conventional framework upgrade. It provided an opportunity to simplify the technical foundation of the application and improve the way future changes could be made.
Alongside the Expo migration, the team has continued to upgrade React Native, strengthen automated end-to-end testing and improve the processes surrounding releases. These changes have helped create a more robust foundation for ongoing development while reducing the risks associated with maintaining a long-running mobile application.
Improving the experience where it matters most
The technical work has also focused on the areas of the application that users interact with most.
The platform's feed and media functionality sit at the centre of the experience, with distributors consuming company updates and marketing content through posts, images and video. Improvements to feed rendering, list performance and media playback have helped create a smoother experience across these high-use areas.
This type of work is less visible than launching a new feature, but it can have a significant impact on the experience of an established product. Performance issues tend to compound in the parts of an application that users interact with most frequently, making the optimisation of these areas particularly important.
The team has also strengthened monitoring and logging, giving greater visibility into how the application is performing and where potential issues may arise. Database architecture, cloud infrastructure and security have been reviewed and optimised as part of the broader effort to improve maintainability and control operational costs.
The result is not a single, dramatic change to the application, but a series of improvements that collectively make the platform stronger, more stable and easier to maintain.
A platform that continues to support a global business
For Union Swiss, the Bio-Oil platform has become an important part of how the company connects its global business with the distributors representing the brand in local markets.
The application also provides visibility into business performance, allowing distributors to see information such as product performance, revenue and growth across markets. This adds another dimension to the platform, providing a view of how different parts of the distributor network are performing alongside the company's broader communications.
For Bluegrass, the work has meant supporting the platform through the realities that come with a long-lived digital product: changing business requirements, evolving technology and the need to make improvements without disrupting the people who rely on it.
It is a different challenge from launching a new application. The focus is on making considered improvements over time, balancing new requirements with the health and stability of the platform that is already in use.
As Bio-Oil enters its next chapter after 35 years, the technology supporting its global distributor network continues to evolve alongside it. What began as an Instagram-inspired application has become a central communication platform for a global consumer brand, supported by an ongoing technology partnership focused on keeping the product fit for the business it serves.
About Bluegrass Digital
Bluegrass Digital designs and builds digital products and platforms that customers love, through human-led, AI-enabled delivery.
With expertise across mobile development, digital experience platforms, cloud technologies and software engineering, we help organisations build, modernise and evolve digital products that support changing business needs.
Bluegrass Digital is an Umbraco Gold Partner with over 17 years of experience and a Silver Partner with Optimizely. For more information, visit www.bluegrassdigital.com.
