Founded in 2019, Lalo is a direct-to-consumer baby and toddler brand known for its design-forward, multifunctional products that provide lasting value to families.
When co-founders Greg Davidson and Michael Wieder were preparing to launch the brand, they sought expert advice to determine which commerce platform would best fit their needs.
“We talked to everybody,” says Michael. “Every designer, developer, agency, and investor we spoke with recommended Shopify. That made the choice a no-brainer.”
The advice paid off as Lalo’s products became fast favorites among new parents. And as demand accelerated, the team deepened its partnership with Shopify by upgrading to Shopify Plus for greater access to the tools, resources, and support it needed to efficiently scale.
With Shopify, Lalo has seen:
- 30% increase in units per transaction (UPT) since launching new theme on Online Store 2.0
- 2X conversion rate since launching new theme on Online Store 2.0
- 3X attributable sales from influencers in first six months using Shopify Collabs
- 16% increase in average order value (AOV) when the order included Collective products
Challenge
With its first product ready to go to market, Lalo debuted its online store. The brand’s website served not only as a shopping destination for a growing collection of baby products, but as a place where Lalo could build authentic customer connections by sharing the story behind the brand and its values.
Lalo’s intuitively designed online experience coupled with its straightforward product messaging helped it build a loyal customer base quickly. It also began receiving a high volume of inbound affiliate requests from social media content creators, eager to partner with the brand and demonstrate the value of its products to their audiences.
And, while Lalo had always used dropshipping to sell other stores' products on their site, they were forced to use complicated, time-consuming hacks for daily tasks. They needed to simplify and automate dropshipping processes so they could easily add partner brands to their product assortment.
Lalo’s vision for a better baby product brand was clearly striking a chord. But as the business grew—and so did the team—it was essential for the brand to scale efficiently if it wanted to meet its ambitious growth goals without overwhelming employees with excessive manual duties. About a year after its launch, Lalo upgraded to Shopify Plus and began a new phase of its growth journey.
Solution
Lalo wanted to operationalize its workflows and maximize efficiency throughout the company. It began using Shopify Flow, an automation platform from Shopify, to automatically complete tasks such as adding customer or order tags based on specific triggers and conditions. This helped the team improve its customer segmentation and provide customers with a more personalized experience throughout their journey with the brand.
Lalo used Shopify Scripts in conjunction with Flow to further personalize its customer journey. It created scripts to unlock special offers at checkout and ensure product discounts were always properly applied.
“Shopify Flow and Scripts have been critical to our success during high-traffic periods such as Black Friday Cyber Monday,” says Michael. “The tools are very user friendly, so we don’t have to rely on specialists. Our team is empowered by the ability to use these tools.”
The brand also wanted to present useful product information and create cross-selling opportunities in a seamless way on the website. It began testing different customizations to its product detail pages with metafields and metaobjects and found success giving customers more visibility into products from Lalo’s catalog that might interest them and sharing product specifications that new parents were likely to find valuable.
In terms of brand awareness, Lalo was determined to double down on its strategy of partnering with content creators and growing its affiliate sales network. It used Shopify Collabs, an all-in-one solution to find influencers and run an affiliate program, to accomplish this goal.
“Shopify Collabs has helped us significantly streamline our affiliate program,” says Michael. “Gifting, measurement, tracking, and of course, rewarding influencers and creators for their promotion has all gotten easier. As a result, we’ve seen attributable sales from influencers skyrocket.”
To address the dropshipping challenges, Lalo joined Shopify Collective, which allowed them to connect seamlessly with other businesses on Shopify, like PlanToys. This integration made it faster and easier to share products and price lists seamlessly through their Shopify admin, streamlining the process of adding new products to the site.
Collective offers seamless dropshipping of other stores’ products. Connecting within the Shopify ecosystem was seamless, because the other stores are on Shopify, too.
Results
Since upgrading to Shopify Plus, Lalo has further distinguished itself as a leader in the baby and toddler product market. With a growing staff of full-time employees spread across nine US states and four countries, the company is growing faster than ever.
It started selling internationally this year with its first cross-border shipments to Canada. While its online store remains its main sales channel, it has also taken advantage of integrations between Shopify and leading online baby registries at Babylist and Amazon to drive a growing proportion of sales by meeting new parents where they are already spending time.
Looking ahead, Lalo plans to continue delivering on its mission of making new parents’ lives easier by launching more innovative products and building deeper relationships with the families using them around the world.
Shopify Plus gives us what we need to run our business while providing the best level of service possible to our customers. The amount of tools, frequency of product improvements, and the reliability of the platform that we’ve experienced is unmatched.
