Cosmetic contact lens retailer SWATI Cosmetics was born out of a true love story between founders based in Sweden and India, with a vision of affording customers the freedom to be their “own kind of beautiful.”
With their sights set on building a global community of customers, SWATI needed a commerce platform that could support its growth plans where its existing platform was falling short.
Since moving to Shopify Plus, the brand has seen:
- 45% revenue increase in key markets
- 30% lower customer acquisitions costs
- 10x faster onboarding of new team members
Challenge: Finding a commerce platform to support global expansion
Before SWATI switched to Shopify from Centra, they faced an increasingly complex setup that made it difficult to make any changes to their website. Just trying out the few automation tools available for integration were difficult, month-long projects, while tools to automate key processes like applying local taxes couldn’t be integrated at all.
As a growing business, every penny—and second—counted, but the complexity of Centra meant that getting new employees up to speed took weeks. This complexity also resulted in far too much dependency on the platform’s technical support team to make even the simplest of changes.
As SWATI grew globally, the team was keen to find a new partner that could support their expansion whilst enabling the flexibility they needed to maintain their existing offerings to customers.
While the platform we used originally supported us well in the Nordics where we started the company, the limitations became apparent as we looked to expand globally.
Solution: Going global, made simple
The ease of use, flexibility, and extensive plugin-integration capabilities of Shopify were all key selling points when SWATI decided to replatform. Upon migration, they instantly began taking advantage of the platform’s extensive app ecosystem to improve customer service and expand their offerings around the world.
Shopify has automated much of SWATI’s localisation, such as currency conversion, which now allows customers in 119 countries to see their own local currencies displayed while shopping and checking out. Whilst initially planning to operate five distinctive websites, the centralized management capabilities of Shopify has enabled SWATI to reduce that to just two. This enables the brand to be much more efficient whilst also building in features such as tax and checkout localisation, with product translation automated depending on the customer’s region.
Shopify has helped us target and eliminate multiple operational pain points. For almost every issue there has been an out-of-box automation tool, or APIs readily available to allow for external integration and custom-built tools.
Results: Boosting global sales in the blink of an eye
Since migrating from Centra to Shopify Plus, SWATI has enjoyed a 40% boost in their conversion rate. And as they began to roll out more features, they saw their revenue increase by up to 45% in key regions. At the same time, due to more effective tracking across its website, SWATI’s customer acquisition costs have reduced by 30%.
The simplicity of Shopify also made onboarding new staff 10 times faster; from several weeks down to as little as two days. And since Shopify is so widely used among ecommerce retailers, it has also become much easier to find new, quality hires with Shopify experience.
Looking ahead, SWATI is also using Shopify to out its B2B offering. Thanks to B2B on Shopify—a suite of features that allow brands to sell business-to-business on Shopify— SWATI is developing a wholesale storefront for a global market, and pricing options specific to the needs of businesses.
“It was very easy to understand Shopify’s B2B setup,” says Vineet. “It used to be so difficult to support business customers on our old platform, but now we’re building a much more streamlined process to support our customers more effectively.”
The future is bright for SWATI now that the brand is operating more efficiently than ever before and building a global community of customers.
“We are just a four-year-old company, and we are already selling in more than 100 countries,” says Vishal Nanda, Co-founder and CEO of SWATI. “This would have been just impossible a couple of years ago. But today with Shopify Plus, it’s much easier, almost a standard.”
Going global was only for big companies with deep pockets. But with Shopify, the game changes. A small company sitting in a small village can access customers around the world.
