In its early days, Kick Game was an independent, online-only footwear retailer offering rare and exclusive sneaker drops. But the brand, founded by brothers David and Robert Franks in 2013, has scaled up massively, from opening its inaugural flagship store on London’s Kensington High Street in 2020 to becoming a premium online marketplace with bricks-and-mortar stores across the UK and Europe. Today it houses not only some of the most sought-after streetwear brands, but celebrity collaborations – thanks in no small part to Shopify’s omnichannel solutions.
Since migrating to Shopify, the brand has seen:
- 70% of transactions driven by organic social
- Over 10 videos with 1m+ views
- Revenue of c.£50m in 2022 with £265 AOV
Challenge
The team at Kick Game were looking to scale and launch onto the high street, but critically, their previous ecommerce platform, OpenCart, lacked in-store point of sale (POS) integration. As Kick Game was looking to open its first store, one unified POS system that logged inventory across web and physical stores was essential.
Making updates to the website was also proving a tedious process, with the responsibility for manually publishing new product pages falling to the company’s sole developer. Kick Game needed a website host that would allow its online and offline operations to seamlessly sync, while giving back time to focus on other areas of the business – but the team didn’t want to part with its existing app integrations such as Xero and ShipStation.
This was the catalyst for moving to Shopify Plus.
Now I can go into Shopify POS and spin up a new store in half an hour. Then anytime something sells in store, it automatically adjusts the inventory online as well. It's a game-changer when you're trying to set up an omnichannel business.
Solution
After surveying their options for a commerce solution that could support the physical growth of the brand first, the Kick Game team decided on Shopify Plus for its effortless POS integration with its stores and existing tech stack – before quickly realising it could help address other pain points such as order management reporting and theme development.
The drag-and-drop feature in Online Store 2.0 changed the game when it came to customising home pages and banners and creating more seamless, visually pleasing experiences for customers, zero code required.
As well as the overall look of the website, user experience (UX) has been made that much smoother by Shopify’s Search and Discovery app which automatically hides out-of-stock items and powers the search and filtering feature, reducing bounce rates dramatically.
Kick Game’s custom-built marketplace gives it a leg-up among its competitors in luxury commerce by connecting it with various suppliers around the world; an order could come directly from the Kick Game warehouse or from a supplier in Italy, allowing it to offer a much more diverse selection of products.
Before I was doing lots of manual fixes, patching security upgrades, and it can just become a nightmare at times. So, just having that ease of Shopify taking care of everything for you – you don't have to worry about anything security-related.
Results
The simplicity of opening a new store location with Shopify POS and the ability to automatically track inventory levels has enabled Kick Game to expand at speed – from £2 million to 50 million in annual revenue in a few short years. Its omnichannel model has opened up opportunities for even more brands to sell via the Kick Game marketplace, as well as collaborations with artists and celebrities.
Kick Game’s YouTube channel is now a huge arm of the business. Through filming celebrity shopping videos in its Covent Garden store and promoting them in a video section on the website, sales have gone through the roof. A collaboration with IShowSpeed saw an instant 2000 sales of the Yeezy Foam Runner after the influencer picked up the shoe in a sneaker shopping video – a prime example of how Shopify enables internal marketing teams to embed content that can drive even more conversions.
When we post a celebrity – like Rio Ferdinand came into our store a few weeks ago and did a sneaker shopping episode – we see a huge uplift in sales for those shoes, because it's a nice curated landing page. Compared to prior to using Shopify, we see a much higher time spent on site on our collection pages.
Kick Game now has over 10,000 sellers on its platform, enabled by its Shopify-built inventory management app Zelph, which lets other brands sell through its platform and syncs to Shopify constantly in the background. Because brands are able to sell via Kick Game’s Shopify store and get paid automatically, the retailer has rapidly evolved into a high-end shopping arena for in-demand brands and influencers.