An interview with Steve Bauer, vice president of ecommerce and digital at Arhaus, by Laine Kavanaugh, enterprise success manager for Arhaus at Shopify
We sat down with Steve Bauer, vice president of ecommerce and digital at Arhaus to talk about Arhaus’s journey from a complex custom build to Shopify. Now in his 10th year at Arhaus, Steve started with a focus on digital marketing before moving to a broader role of leading all customer-facing digital landscape teams, which includes digital marketing, ecommerce merchandising, operations, and site analytics. He’s always looking to evolve and innovate in his quest for what’s next within the digital customer experience.
Since migrating from a complex homegrown platform to Shopify, Arhaus has:
- Reduced development time, enabling seamless scalability for long-term growth
- Achieved higher customer engagement metrics and conversions
- Unified in-store and online commerce, elevating the customer experience
The following content is based on our interview with Steve, presented in his own words. It has been edited for clarity and length. To watch the full video interview, click here
About Arhaus: Craftsmanship, sustainability, inspiration
Arhaus was founded in 1986 and has been quickly growing ever since. Our CEO, John Reed, and his father started the company with the mission to create premium home furnishings that are sustainably sourced, lovingly made, and built to last. More than 35 years later, our brand remains firmly rooted in the same core principles.
What sets the brand apart is how we source our products, seeking out and building enduring partnerships directly with artisans around the world to create an exclusive assortment of unique, heirloom quality furniture and décor.
In addition to our online presence, we currently have more than 90 showroom and design studio locations across the country. Whether shopping in person or virtually, we prioritize client-first service through complimentary design services offered both in-store and online.
In addition to our online presence, we currently have more than 90 showroom and design studio locations across the country.
Creating an inclusive customer experience
Our customer base has a very wide range because aside from a certain level of affluence, an appreciation and desire for well designed, high-quality furniture is not exclusive to a specific age group. We’re definitely in the premium high end, with some of our more bespoke items in the luxury space.
Considering the breadth of our product assortment that offers nearly endless style and material options, I think our biggest priority is to engage potential customers with inspirational content, showcasing our stories of quality and sustainability. We want to meet our customers wherever they want to meet us.
Arhaus's commitment to unified commerce
Unified commerce is very near and dear to Arhaus because of our business model. We want to make sure that every client is getting the Arhaus experience—whether they’re driving by a store and saying, “Oh, this looks cool. Let's head in there,” or if they engage with our site, we want to give them that same sense of comfort and coziness. While some of our customers want a lot of assistance, especially if they’re purchasing a custom piece, we do have customers who know they need an end table, maybe a few pillows and accessories, and may not want to interact with a store in person. We want to build a relationship with that customer as well, and that’s where our ecommerce comes in.
The challenge: Building and scaling for the future with a homegrown platform
Previously Arhaus was operating on a homegrown platform. While there was a lot of flexibility, there were also a lot of limitations with that. And as we kept growing, and our growth was pretty exponential, we were putting a lot of R&D into that platform. We were constantly asking, “What’s the next thing to build? What’s the next thing that we have to do?”
Previously Arhaus was operating on a homegrown platform. While there was a lot of flexibility, there were also a lot of limitations.
Navigating explosive growth
The pandemic also happened, and the home business skyrocketed. For a time, our stores were closed and people couldn’t go out at all. But what we found was that even though the stores were closed, many of our sales associates were still working with clients because they still needed furniture—and they were utilizing our website as a resource for all of that.
That prompted us to look for more power behind the ecommerce engine. Arhaus extensively researched other solutions in the marketplace, and it really came down to the basics.
Reporting and analytics in general were a high priority. We wanted to make sure that we were able to have a customer dashboard and view our statistics. Overall, our business has a lot of complexities given the way that items are ordered and the way that we ship. So what we were really looking at was making sure our new platform would allow us to not only continue running the same operation that we were, but then start to enhance each of those things as well.
Thinking about different models of shipping or offering more optionality to the customer, we were looking at the suite of what we could do today and adopt five years from now. Shopify checked all the boxes, both for current and future needs.
Shopify checked all the boxes, both for current and future needs.
As an enterprise company, there is so much online to offline, so we were really looking for the ability to bridge everything together—not just from an ecommerce sales solution, but to holistically be a better company for our customers.
We decided to migrate from our homegrown solution to Shopify in order to set Arhaus up with a fantastic foundation to build and scale for the future.
We decided to migrate from our homegrown solution to Shopify in order to set Arhaus up with a fantastic foundation to build and scale for the future.
The solution: Arhaus’s migration to Shopify
Our homegrown platform was good in its time. We just outgrew it.
One of the things that really attracted us to Shopify was not only having that best-in-class foundation but a true sense of scalability.
It really excited us to know that we were going to be working with a provider that, over time, would add new functions and new capabilities that we could apply to our business, which is not something we had in the past. As we looked at other vendors, it really wasn’t in their DNA as we felt it was with Shopify.
Our homegrown platform was good in its time. We just outgrew it. One of the things that really attracted us to Shopify was not only having that best-in-class foundation but a true sense of scalability.
A complex but successful redesign
We’ve been on Shopify just over two years now. To migrate, we partnered with Tomorrow Agency, now Domaine, who is best in breed and had the stamp of approval from Shopify, so thankfully they took a lot of the pain out of it for us. With that agency’s help, we also did a complete site redesign—nothing on the site today existed two years ago. Part of that was very complex. We might have 5 different sizes and 800 different fabrics for a certain piece of furniture, but we’re not able to show all 800 online so we decide, “Which 20 fabrics can we show?” There are definitely compromises that were made with some of it, but I can also state that ever since we launched on Shopify, the business has taken off.
Ever since we launched on Shopify, the business has taken off.
Customization and variance
We had to do a fair amount of customization as it related to the way that our products are set up. We worked on customization on the technical side, but also customer experience. Given that we are so focused on accommodating for our customers, we wanted to make sure that we could be as accommodating as possible without driving everybody crazy, both customers and internally.
There are so many different ways you can order products, depending on what kind of product you want. For example, we have chairs where you can order different fillings for the seats. So we had to decide—is that something we want to launch with? Or is that something we want to get to a couple of years from now?
There’s so much variability in what a person's definition of comfort is, and while we'd love to be able to hit 100% of that, even if we can get to 95%, we’re super happy. We know that, in the long term, Shopify is going to help us get to that 100%.
Change management and adoption
There’s pushback any time you’re introducing new technology, with people asking, “What is this going to do? How are our systems going to integrate with this?” When you completely redesign the site, there’s also a lot of fear that customers may be used to seeing things a certain way.
What we did was simply bring everyone along on the journey. It wasn’t necessarily our team over here in a bunker just looking to get the site live. No matter who it was in the company, if there was a concern, we addressed it head on and were solution-oriented in terms of making sure that it met everyone’s needs.
Flexibility and data-driven decision making
Thankfully, the Shopify platform itself was nimble enough to work around any issues, like an API integrating with one of our internal systems or if someone was worried about customers not being able to see store information.
Another great thing about Shopify is that we can measure everything, which is something we couldn’t do on our previous platform either. We were able to have conversations about if the solution was working based on stats or if we needed to pivot, we could pivot very quickly.
Another great thing about Shopify is that we can measure everything, which is something we couldn’t do on our previous platform either.
The results: Early success with Shopify
There have been a lot of advantages we’ve seen since migrating to Shopify.
Gains in engagement metrics
I’d say first and foremost is that there’s a seamless customer experience. When we first migrated over, we saw a lot of gains within engagement metrics on our site. Measuring how many pages people were going to and how long they were staying on the site, a lot of those metrics got far better when we moved over to Shopify. That’s not just because of user experience, but also things like site speed and the way images were displaying on the site. We like how everything is rendered and structured. That was a huge win for us.
Improved conversions and exceeded goals
When we set our goals from a sales standpoint and from a conversion standpoint, every year since we've been on Shopify—which has been over the last two years—we've far exceeded the goals that we set for ourselves.
Every year since we've been on Shopify—which has been over the last two years—we've far exceeded the goals that we set for ourselves.
Long-term growth and adaptability
That’s a true testament to the team who was working with us when we brought Shopify on and the support that we’ve gotten since we’ve been on Shopify, because we've talked a lot about, “What is it that we want to do? How do we want to evolve this site? Where do we want to be in 2 years, 5 years, 10 years?” And by working with our team over at Shopify, we’ve been able to do a great job of setting ourselves up for the long term.
Speed to market and scalability
I think the biggest advantage of Shopify is experiencing much shorter timelines to build the solutions we want within the platform. If we had a certain feature we wanted to build on our previous homegrown site, that may have taken 12 to 18 months—and it takes maybe 3 months with Shopify because either there’s already a solution or if it’s something customized, chances are someone has had to deal with it and can help us. This really helps us as we look to scale our business long term.
The biggest advantage of Shopify is experiencing much shorter timelines to build the solutions we want within the platform.
Improved in-store and B2B experiences
Today, all of our associates are utilizing Arhaus.com as they walk around a store with their clients. They’re flipping through different items, and it’s a great resource for them to be able to pull information immediately.
We also have a trade business, which includes interior designers who have their own firms but are working on behalf of Arhaus to sell products within our assortments. That entails relationships that we build, and they’re using the website as a resource.
We have a contract business as well, where we sell to resorts, larger offices, and restaurants. And, of course, anyone who’s curious about our product—in any way they want to utilize it—can go to the website and not only look at the product, but also discover these various programs. We have information pages about all of them, ways to sign up, and ways to stay connected with us, and being able to pull all of that together utilizing Shopify has been great.
Looking forward: Embracing growth and innovation
The first thing we’re very excited about is checkout extensibility. For me personally, it’s about that one-page checkout.
We’re also super excited for what we can do with customer experience to increase conversion. Buying furniture isn’t necessarily the easiest task, so we don’t want to have to take them through this long journey before they’re ready to purchase.
Our custom business is a big business for us, and knowing that Shopify is going to be increasing their variant limit gives us a lot more flexibility in trying to put all these different combinations together.
If you go into an Arhaus store, you’re going to see hundreds of fabrics up on our fabric wall—there are so many different things that you can do with that palette—and being able to replicate that as closely as we can online so that people can do their research there is great.
Harnessing AR and VR to help customers make decisions confidently
At Arhaus, we have this highly customizable business with configurable products. If you think about a sectional sofa, you could have a right arm or a left arm, and you can make it as big or as small as you want, depending on your space. The AR and VR opportunities that are emerging are gigantic for us because we’re able to visualize things that, quite frankly, you just couldn't do before. You couldn’t place a chair in a room without literally placing the chair in the room. So having that technology is a huge gain for us in the short term and long term to make sure that we continue to capture the essence of Arhaus.
We actually started with a room planning tool that had 3D capabilities and was really for our own internal interior designers—something to take all the Arhaus products, place them in a room, and really be able to fly through the room and consider, “What does this look like as I'm walking through?” Taking that now to the next level is being able to hold your phone up to that corner of the room where you really want to put that chair and making sure that it matches the wall color, the flooring, and looking at all the various options for it.
I always say that furniture is the third largest purchase you’re going to make in your life. Number one is a house, number two is a car, number three is furniture. So we really want our customers to truly invest in Arhaus and invest in these pieces. We want to instill as much confidence as possible into the customer before they purchase with our solutions and website capabilities.
When it comes to AR and VR, we have very high standards of what we’re putting out there into the marketplace. It's not going to be something that looks robotic or artificial. There are a lot of flashy bells and whistles in technology today, but what we have found is that we really want tools that are usable for the customer, that meet a need that they’re not getting today.
Building for the future with Shopify
When evaluating ecommerce platforms, I encourage enterprise companies with complex builds to create a roadmap focused on future expansion and how to get there—and to ask as many questions as possible. As we were looking to move to Shopify, there were a lot of things that came up where we asked, “Can we do this?” And when the answer for almost everything was yes, we knew we were on the right path.
As we were looking to move to Shopify, there were a lot of things that came up where we asked, “Can we do this?” And when the answer for almost everything was yes, we knew we were on the right path.
It was also important to us to look at the ecosystem. Shopify has a number of different partners with apps that seamlessly plug in, and that has saved us time and money on new tools and software.
Looking at where we want to take Arhaus in the future, I definitely think that the building blocks have been put into place by Shopify. There's just such a synchronicity where when we're thinking about what the next thing is, Shopify is right there or maybe even has thought of it already.
Looking at where we want to take Arhaus in the future, I definitely think that the building blocks have been put into place by Shopify.
We hope to leverage the knowledge base and feedback Shopify gets from all customers, because while there's a lot of uniqueness to our business and the way that furniture companies operate, at the end of the day all retail businesses rub up against the same friction.Our partnership with Shopify just makes complete sense in the long term.
Watch the entire interview
Watch the full video interview with Steve Bauer, vice president president of ecommerce and digital at Arhaus, for a deep dive into the Arhaus story.
