Shopify is an "all-inclusive" e-commerce platform that anyone can use to set up an online shop according to their own requirements. The platform competes with self-hosted systems such as WooCommerce, Magento or Shopware.
Is Shopify the right choice for your company?
Using Shopify as a shop system has many advantages, depending on the project.
It is ideal for anyone who wants to bring their products to market quickly, easily and without a lot of configuration work. The look and feel can be easily customised, and content and product maintenance is also easier than with Magento, for example. You can also find a list of all the advantages here.
There are many companies that have achieved impressive sales with Shopify. In the following I will present 5 success stories that might also be inspiring for your company and the start of an online business.
Gymshark & scalable growth
Gymshark started out as a garage business and has developed into an extremely fast-growing brand with more and more enthusiastic fans, mainly through social media. In order to sell products online, Gymshark decided to set up a Magento online shop.
Not long afterwards, however, this decision turned out to be a misstep. The cost-intensive development of the shop took a long time, as is usual for Magento. By the time the shop was completed, the brand had doubled in size and the requirements for the shop were no longer being met. During Black Friday, the site crashed and cost Gymshark around £100k.
Gymshark therefore decided to create a stable online shop with Shopify Plus. With the help of Shopify Scripts, Gymshark also extended the server code so that they could customise their checkout and surprise customers with free extras. Gymshark is now one of the fastest growing brands in the fitness industry with over $500 million in revenue and more than 5 million social media followers.
Gitti & the start of her own company
Gitti has its origins in the dining room of the founder, who wanted to bring nail polishes to the market that, unlike conventional nail polishes, are not severely harmful to health, carcinogenic and detrimental to fertility and hormone balance.
After participating in an accelerator programme and featuring in Vogue Germany and International, Gitti set up a Shopify shop and went to market with a stock that should last 6-7 months. Contrary to expectations, the shop was completely sold out within 2 hours.
Gitti nail polishes are sold via direct-to-consumer marketing. The community is always involved in the development of new colours and products on social media.
Kylie Cosmetics & her empire
Even the Kardashians use Shopify. To market her Kylie Cosmetics brand, Kylie Jenner's team developed a Shopify shop. Instead of employing a large number of people to sell her products on all platforms, she skilfully opted for Shopify. This allowed her to manage her business, host the website and provide her shop with unlimited bandwidth.
After Kylie Jenner announced her launch on social media, her 15,000 products sold out within minutes.
Shopify's ability to handle the volume of visitors to the Kardashian line shows how robust and stable the platform is in supporting even big brands with big ambitions and big reach.
Fielmann & digitalisation
Germany's largest optician chain Fielmann had long resisted selling glasses online. Now the company has decided to take an agile approach to marketing its glasses online. While it was expected that the brand would opt for a complex, time-consuming and cost-intensive shop development, the choice was surprisingly made in favour of Shopify.
In the new shop, which was implemented in combination with Makaria Headless CMS, it is currently possible to order glasses, sunglasses and contact lenses without prescription, as well as view all eyewear models in advance and check where they are available.
Freeletics & the Black Friday
Freeletics is one of the best-known examples of Shopify shops. The company started out as a digital fitness coach and now also covers the e-commerce sector with its subsidiary "Freeletics Ware". Black Friday is one of the most important days of the year for Freeletics.
On this day, Freeletics makes many times its usual turnover. With Shopify, Freeletics has a reliable partner - the Shopify servers scale with it and the company doesn't have to worry about the shop being brought to its knees by too much traffic.
For this one day of the year, a team develops a strategy in advance to market the products in the best possible way on social media and fulfil customer expectations on Black Friday. For example, the discounted prices are synchronised to all sales channels via Shopify and the theme is updated to graphically advertise the latest offers directly on the homepage.
These success stories clearly demonstrate the success that can be achieved with Shopify. Regardless of size and brand awareness. If you are also looking for a suitable solution for your company, please contact me and perhaps we can develop your company into the next Shopify success story.
Let´s start your Shopify Journey