How Waterdrop® manages 40+ stores worldwide with Shopify POS

What if there was a way you could conveniently add flavour to your water, that was actually good for you? That’s what Waterdrop co-founder Martin Murray had in mind when he first envisioned the sugar-free beverage brand. In 2016, Martin along with his brother Henry and friend Christoph set out on a mission to get people to drink more water, with the finest fruit and plant extracts compressed into one small cube. Fuelled through a fruitful partnership with Shopify, the Austrian brand now has 40+ stores, primarily across Europe, and has even ventured over to Australia.

Since 2016, Waterdrop® has achieved:

• 40+ stores
• 40% year-on-year growth on average
• €140 million in revenue in 2024

Challenge

Waterdrop’s ethos centres around what Global Retail Director Kevin Breese calls “moments of hydration”, which are about more than just allowing people to try the product, but rather, opportunities to connect with their customers. With this ethos, as well as the means to support their physical growth, the brand needed more tools in their arsenal that would help them build their community. From day one, they knew that focusing on how they wanted customers to feel inside their stores was central to their brand’s essence.

Solution

When Waterdrop® chose Shopify as a partner, they sought to replicate their proven successful in-store experience for new audiences as they expanded internationally. This required a bespoke, unified commerce approach powered by Shopify.

Shopify POS

Waterdrop’s strategy is rooted in their commitment to selling customers a product that they need, rather than want. As the brand quickly scaled, it became apparent that to do this, they needed to capture customer insights at every stage of their journey, both online and offline. When they started out, they had many different systems and tools for taking payments and managing customer information across different channels. Shopify POS was selected to bring those disparate streams into a cohesive whole—benefiting the business and its customers.

This involved bringing Shopify POS to the brand’s in-store tasting station, the Cenote. Named after a watering hole found in Mexico, the Cenote is more than a sample stand; it’s where the brand’s community comes together to taste and talk about the product. But perhaps more importantly, it’s where customers come to convert.

By using Shopify POS, Waterdrop® employees (known as Hydristas) gain more insights in general, whether it’s shopping history or product preferences—which can then be used to better assist and reward customers and likewise, help build their sales pipeline and commission. Crucially, integration between Shopify POS and Waterdrop’s CRM platform also means that when transactions take place in-store or online, information is automatically shared and updated across the different systems, keeping everything aligned and accurate.

Powering pop-ups

Thanks to better insights from Shopify POS, employees at the Cenote also immediately know whether a shopper is a super fan, whether they’ve shopped once or twice before, or if they’re an entirely new customer. What’s more, it makes the brand’s pop-up events run a lot smoother; there’s no need for specialist training and set up can be done seamlessly on the day.

With Shopify’s powerful suite of POS hardware, Hydristas can take payments anywhere on the shop floor—including pop-up locations. This fuels Waterdrop’s strategy of creating moments of hydration at every touch point and selling to customers wherever they are, whether they’re a long-time customer or discovering the brand for the first time.

Unified commerce

Shopify also supports Waterdrop’s unified commerce strategy by uncovering data insights across different channels. This enables them to build clearer customer segments, identify needs and target sales or marketing efforts.

In turn, this unified commerce approach also helps the team to build customer loyalty. To give an example, customers are able to return their blister packaging to stores for recycling. By doing so, they gain loyalty points which can be exchanged for free products via their website—all while supporting Waterdrop’s commitment to sustainability.

International markets

With Shopify’s host of international sales features, Waterdrop® has been able to enter new markets while maintaining their global retail standard, which they call the Six Drop Selling Ceremony. This ensures that even while tailoring each store to its own individual market, Hydristas all over the world follow the same principles for customer service, maintaining brand consistency in every country.

Shopify plays a crucial role here, powering a consistent user and customer experience while also enabling payment systems to be set up rapidly. Thanks to its speed and ease of use, little training is needed to use Shopify’s systems and consequently, staff in new markets have more time to focus on creating incredible customer experiences.

Results

The brand’s €140 million in revenue in 2024, accompanied by 40% year-on-year average growth in recent years, is in part due to the increased volume of completed purchases, which Waterdrop’s Global Head of E-commerce, Ieva Urbonaite, attributes to their smooth customer journey enabled by their unified approach. Success has been further boosted through subscription (contributing to 10% of the company’s revenue) and loyalty programs powered by Shopify. As a result, post-purchase upsells have also rocketed, creating added excitement for customers as they bag an exclusive deal.

The ease of using Shopify has also made the lives of Waterdrop® employees better. The platform’s apps and integrations have afforded its growing global e-commerce team more time to focus on the things that make Waterdrop unique: beautiful imagery and a blossoming community.