Originally launched under the name "butter." by co-founders Tiffany Chng and Olivia Ziyi Yiong, cheak started out during the COVID-19 pandemic with a mission to provide elevated designs made from high quality fabrics and sized to fit Asian forms. In 2022, the company merged with Love, Bonito,rebranding as it became the official activewear line of Singapore’s largest fashion retailer.
Challenge
Online sales have always been an integral part of cheak’s business, making up 100% of sales in its early days. However, as the company was in the process of merging with Love, Bonito, it struggled to achieve the scale with its existing online store that it would need as its new parent company’s dedicated activewear brand. New product campaign launches took a week to roll out, it was difficult to bundle product offerings and discounts for customers, and international expansion capabilities were limited—a major barrier to building a regional presence.
Solution
Cheak upgraded to Shopify Plus on the advice of its website development partner, Jumpstart, which built a new store for the company. Drawing upon the functionality of several Shopify Plus features, Jumpstart gave cheak the scalability and reach it needed to grow as a major brand in Love, Bonito’s product portfolio.
Using Shopify LaunchPad, cheak was able to streamline and speed up its product launch time. With Shopify Scripts and Shopify Flow, the company could automate discount offers on product variants and bundles, greatly simplifying the process. Moreover, leveraging Shopify Plus expansion stores, cheak launched its first stores in other markets, enabling it to build a localised presence in Malaysia, Hong Kong SAR and Indonesia.
Results
With Shopify Plus, cheak has cut the length of time it takes to roll out new products online from a week to just a couple of days. Now, the company can launch more new products, more frequently, than it could before. Meanwhile, cheak’s automated product discounting process enables the company to drive customer conversion rates and improve the customer experience online, helping to encourage return visits and boost overall traffic.
At the same time, with the unified backend offered by Shopify Plus expansion stores, cheak can focus its resources on localized branding and marketing as it expands into other markets instead of using up valuable resources on the administrative tasks usually involved in managing multiple sites in different countries.
Cheak is now looking at extending its international footprint, with more expansion store launches in the works. The company also plans to make better use of the customer data Shopify Plus provides it. Using data analytics, cheak hopes to gain a greater understanding of its product performance and customer behavior to drive further growth in the future.
Having one back end for multiple sites saves time. Now, if we have different offers for different markets, we can customize each offer to each market’s online store. That customization also extends to discounts on different product variants and bundles. We can close off the customer journey by offering discounts on specific colors rather than entire styles, which is important.
