Founded in 2012, Blakely is a lifestyle fashion brand based in Norfolk, UK. It has become a trailblazer in men's and women's fashion, based on the belief that clothing should be timeless, long-lasting and helps people to look and feel their best.
Since moving to Shopify, the brand has seen:
- 85% increase in conversion rate
- 49% increase in overall global sales
- 44% year-on-year increase in site visits
- 13% increase in the average order value
Challenge
Despite being a brand built on e-commerce, Blakely faced significant challenges with its previous platform. Lacking reliability, the company often experienced website crashes, especially during peak sales events like Black Friday. The website was also slow to load, creating a poor customer experience and negatively impacting sales.
The website would go down and crash…it was a nightmare, there was one Black Friday, where we probably spent most of the time offline!
The other main concern with Blakely’s previous platform was the lack of integration with other apps, making it difficult to update its Facebook catalogue and manage their back-end data efficiently for example. This limitation hindered its ability to reach its target audience effectively and manage customer data in a way that could actually drive true growth.
Not only that, but a lack of data management tools meant that it faced huge problems in achieving personalization for customers based on their location, such as customers in the EU and USA. This led to additional sales losses.
Solution
After careful consideration, Blakely chose to migrate to Shopify to help it take the business to the next level.
Providing a seamless, user-friendly experience, Shopify offered Blakely’s team a wide range of themes, easy-to-use integrations between apps and excellent reliability. It also enabled the company to launch two further websites dedicated to EU and US customers, allowing it to ensure it could trade internationally more effectively. And, following Brexit in the UK, Blakely was able to use Shopify to launch and maintain a dedicated warehouse in the EU to make shopping easier and more cost-effective for its European customers.
That Shopify provides low and no code integration with other apps was also key to Blakely’s decision. For example, a simple plugin with Klaviyo has empowered Blakely's back-end data management, streamlining operations and enhancing customer interactions and the ability to update its catalogues on social media, all while implementing country redirects to ensure customers go to the right store.
There's just seamless integrations between all the different apps, which is something that we never had before.
With Shopify, Blakely could also successfully optimise its omnichannel strategy, connecting its physical stores, pop-up shops and online sites like never before thanks to Shopify POS and enabling it to accurately track stock levels and analyse sales across stores.
The point-of-sale has been tremendous, we've been able to do pop-up shops and little events. But, we also have two physical stores, one in Westfield in Stratford and one in Norwich. And it's been seamless, just fantastic!
Results
Blakely's partnership with Shopify has had a transformative impact on the business. With Shopify, its conversion rate has increased from 1.4% to 2.6% overall, while the EU store saw an impressive 30% surge since launch. Global sales have grown by 49%, with the US sales increasing by 130% and EU sales experiencing a 60% rise.
Additionally, site visits have grown by 44% year on year, demonstrating a strong surge in traffic volume since the move to Shopify. With future plans including the establishment of a warehouse in the US to enhance delivery times, a focus on CRM to improve customer retention and continuing to build a strong brand identity that resonates with customers. With the help of Shopify, Blakely now expects to achieve a sales target of £35 million in 2023.
The average order value is up 13%. What we've been able to do is sell a wider range of products, as opposed to before where customers would only get one product and then leave again. Now, we have a much bigger basket value.