Caden Lane Nurtures 692% International Sales Growth with Managed Markets

Katy Mimari founded Caden Lane in 2005, while she was pregnant with her first child. The brand began by selling crib bedding, diaper bags, and baby accessories, and has since expanded into apparel for babies, kids, and moms. To this day, the brand places the “needs of the mom” at the core of what they do.

Based in south Texas, Caden Lane had focused exclusively on their growth in the US for years. They recognized the opportunity to grow outside the US but were hesitant to focus on the international market due to exorbitant shipping costs and regulatory complexities that would prevent them from providing an optimal customer experience. After exploring multiple options to overcome these challenges, the team chose to let Shopify help manage their financial and legal operations in international markets.

Since enabling Managed Markets from Shopify, Caden Lane has seen the following year-over-year (YOY) improvements:

• 692% lift in international sales
• 225% increase in click volume from affiliate channels
• 218% increase in orders from affiliate channels
• 111% increase in number of countries sold to

The Challenge: Going global while staying lean

Caden Lane was confident that their mission of making moms’ lives easier would resonate around the world. But the international traffic to their online store was minimal since they weren’t focused on marketing outside the US. Of course, they recognized their huge potential for international growth, but they weren’t quite as sure about how to open their doors to that growth without overburdening the team.

“We knew there was a significant market opportunity in Canada, Australia, and the UK alone,” says Kristin Jerry-Swarek, CFO of Caden Lane. “But we’re a relatively small team that’s experiencing a lot of growth already. We needed to ensure we had the capacity to handle the workload of making the switch to international sales and all that comes with it.”

The team compared multiple options to help them sell internationally. Kristin recalls that “some platforms are all-inclusive; they come to you with the carrier rates for the labels, and they can also handle the duties, tax remittance, and registrations as well. In other cases, you might have multiple companies handling these things. We didn’t think it would be a good use of our time managing more than one partner, even if it came out to be slightly less expensive.”

After an extensive research period, the team concluded that Managed Markets from Shopify was the best fit for their needs. “The appeal of Managed Markets was that it’s an all-in-one solution that would allow us to start selling in over 180 international markets overnight,” says Kristin. “All that combined with the fact that the speed of delivery was faster than most other options helped us solidify our decision.”

The Solution: Managed Markets simplifies international sales for all

Caden Lane was impressed with how seamlessly Managed Markets could be enabled right from their Shopify admin. As Kristin recalls, “It was an easy switch to turn on, which is what we’ve come to expect from Shopify. They make things easy for their merchants.” And once they were up and running, Caden Lane saw the benefits of Managed Markets crystallize quickly.

“Managed Markets took a lot of weight off our shoulders by handling those time-consuming aspects of selling internationally that no one wants to deal with, like duties, tax compliance, and even fraud protection,” says Kristin. At the same time, Caden Lane’s international customers gained vastly more appealing shipping options and a more seamless checkout experience than they had experienced in the past. “The speed of delivery that we can offer with Managed Markets is really great,” says Kristin. “The fact that orders can get to Canada in a day and to the UK in two or three days still kind of blows my mind, especially since the shipping costs are lower than what we were used to.”

With Managed Markets, Caden Lane could also ensure that duty and tax amounts displayed at checkout were clear and customers could pay in their own local currencies. Lower costs and fewer surprises at checkout led to a highly improved customer experience and better results. “The ability to offer a lower shipping cost and display just one line item for taxes and fees at checkout was nice for our customers to see, and I believe it’s really helped lift our conversions,” says Kristin.

The Results: From baby steps to big gains in global sales

Managed Markets enabled Caden Lane to reach more customers around the world and scale faster. Soon after enabling Managed Markets, they began running digital advertising campaigns in a handful of English-speaking countries, which delivered promising results they’ve been able to build from. At the same time, they were pleasantly surprised to see sales rising in Asia and other farther reaching parts of the world where they hadn’t been focusing.

International affiliates also noticed how Caden Lane was making it easier for people in their local markets to purchase, which sparked a new wave of interest in the brand’s affiliate program. “We have a great affiliate program that reaches all across the globe,” says Caleb Orion, Director of Acquisition & Paid Media at Caden Lane. “Since enabling Managed Markets, we’re seeing more interest from affiliates in Singapore, the Philippines, and other new markets, which is exciting because they’re helping us build an audience we were never able to reach before.” New product sales have also seen a boost since the move to Managed Markets. “We launched new giftable products and saw a surge of international traffic,” says Kristin. “We anticipate seeing a lot more of that type of excitement as we continue to launch new products.”

Looking ahead, the team plans to double down on their efforts to expand their customer base and partner network throughout the world. In doing so, they expect to grow the business and improve the predictability of their sales throughout the year. “We’d like to offset some of the seasonality of the market for some of our most popular items like swimsuits by selling in places where it’s summer during our winter time and vice-versa,” says Kristin. “As long as Managed Markets continues performing the way it has already in helping us meet those goals, I can’t imagine us switching to any other solution.”