NUDIENT unlocks global potential with a strategic shift back to Shopify

NUDIENT is a Stockholm-based phone accessory brand founded in 2016 by three childhood friends. Their goal was to disrupt the phone accessory market by creating stylish, precision cases that blend functionality with fashion. While their early journey began with Shopify, they migrated to Centra but later realised that returning to Shopify was the right choice for their evolving needs. Fast-forward to today, and they are poised for global growth, ready to take their brand to new heights.

After switching from Centra to Shopify, Nudient saw:

• Consolidation of 15 storefronts into one single Shopify store

• +19.6% YoY growth in the UK

• +8.3% YTD growth in the US

• Market entry into 2 new APAC markets: Japan and Korea

Challenge

NUDIENT's journey began with Shopify 2016, where they discovered an accessible platform that enabled them to start their business as a 3-person startup. After three years, they wanted to start expanding into new European markets, and decided to switch to Centra. However, this transition brought significant challenges. Pontus Krusing, co-founder and CEO, describes the nine month migration experience as “building your own house with your own hammer,” underscoring the complexity of the new setup.

The platform was custom built to NUDIENT's spec, and lacked best practices to guide them. It wasn’t meeting their integration expectations as Centra’s API ecosystem was not set up to effectively serve markets outside of the Nordics, and the team wanted to integrate with emerging apps, but it wasn’t possible. Pontus highlights, "The reason we switched to Centra was to scale globally. But when it came to expanding into markets like Japan and Australia, we realised it would take months, as we had to develop everything ourselves." Another issue was the site stability and speed. The team were facing multiple site issues–from website crashes on the weekend to payment system issues, and a lack of SEO capability. These ongoing site issues diverted their focus and resources away from business growth.

The significant development time and cost, coupled with frequent frontend bugs meant their total cost of ownership was steadily increasing. The final tipping point came when NUDIENT realised they had to either switch to a new CMS or undertake a complete redesign of their website, as their current CMS was no longer supported by the agency they were working with. Both options would incur significant cost to the business, and this challenge compelled them to rethink their ecommerce strategy, prompting the team to turn their attention back to Shopify.

Clementine Gomez, Shopify Services Business Owner at Woolman highlighted, “selecting a platform with a poor app ecosystem can be both expensive and time consuming for brands, and doesn’t contribute to future-proofing your business.” What was intended to be a step towards global expansion for NUDIENT instead led to increased development time, escalated costs and the inability to efficiently integrate essential tools that were needed to achieve their growth objectives.

Solution

After realising the limitations of Centra, Nudient made the strategic decision to return to Shopify, recognising its robust ecosystem, efficient localisation capabilities and advanced enterprise ecommerce features.

They selected Woolman, a specialised agency to partner with for the implementation. NUDIENT felt that Woolman understood their needs and could provide both technical and design expertise, helping them to disrupt the accessories market with their product. “We are used to hearing challenges similar to NUDIENT’s, such as struggles with the cost of ownership and managing a heavy tech stack. We were confident that Shopify was the right fit for them to address these challenges,” explains Clementine Gomez, Shopify Services Business Owner at Woolman.

Shortly after NUDIENT was back on Shopify, their focus quickly switched from fixing bugs to driving global sales. With Shopify Markets, NUDIENT consolidated 15 storefronts into one globally accessible site, while still providing a hyperlocalised experience. For example, in a single store, NUDIENT maintains highly localised content, languages, currencies and inventories for multiple countries, thanks to Shopify Markets. This has been instrumental in driving NUDIENT's internationalisation into the UK, DACH and North America.

NUDIENT leveraged Shop Pay, a powerful native tool, to benefit from the secure and efficient checkout solution, helping to simplify the online shopping experience. Shop Pay helps to reduce cart abandonment and speeds up transactions. This functionality supports NUDIENT's efforts in driving their online presence globally.

NUDIENT's seamless platform functionality is underpinned by Shopify’s robust native tools and extensive plug-and-play app ecosystem. Now the NUDIENT team has the flexibility to select and connect powerful tools to create their ideal customer experience. Content localisation is automated using Translate and Adapt, while the native app, Search and Discovery enables cross-sell and upsell opportunities. Customer engagement is made easy, with email marketing integration with Klaviyo and customer support from Gorgias. NUDIENT has streamlined logistics and inventory management across multiple locations with by leveraging Shopify’s new multi-inventory feature, As Clementine Gomez, Shopify Services Business Owner pointed out, ”the real beauty is that all of the Shopify apps work so well together, they are perfectly integrated which saves NUDIENT so much time.”

Result

Replatforming to Shopify delivered immediate and promising results. Within a month of going live, NUDIENT saw significant sales growth, particularly in their core markets such as the UK –which has become their second biggest market after Germany, and even surpasses Germany during certain periods. The team was able to leverage proven ecommerce strategies and guidance to achieve their goals efficiently.

As a result of a reduced TCO and operational costs, NUDIENT is focusing their efforts on core business objectives, like launching new products and optimising the customer experience. With valuable time reclaimed, the team is concentrating on building a meaningful and memorable brand experience across channels and regions.

Clementine Gomez, Shopify Services Business Owner at Woolman emphasizes that Shopify is helping to expand NUDIENT's global footprint, saying “Shopify offers a solid platform for Enterprise companies doing global business, and the native features are continually improving.” Shopify’s adaptable platform and solid ecosystem is future-proofing NUDIENT's business, helping them to quickly adapt to meet the changing needs of their customers.