Founded in 1927, Bauer Hockey has become the most recognized name in hockey, designing, developing, and manufacturing the world’s most innovative hockey products.
Bauer’s culture of innovation extends to its products and the way it sells them, which recently led it to reevaluate its tech stack. Bauer wanted to ensure that its dollars were going towards creative differentiators, not commodities, which ultimately prompted it to pursue a replatforming to Shopify.
To build the new Shopify infrastructure, Bauer partnered with CQL to do the following:
- The platform migration
- Shopify Plus design and build
- Integrations with top Shopify Partners, including Avalara, Klaviyo, Searchspring
- Order management system integration with SAP
- The build of a new MVP loyalty program on Yotpo
- Ongoing support
This move significantly lowered Bauer’s need for development resources and provided a foundation to move quickly. Bauer’s site gives internal teams the flexibility & control needed to drive revenue, reach new demographics, improve conversion and AOV, and provide a dynamic onsite experience.
Since moving to Shopify, within 6 months year-over-year, Bauer has seen:
- 60% revenue increase
- 30% order increase
- 20% cost savings
- 18% conversion rate increase
The challenge: High development costs and long timelines
As the market leader and one of most trusted brands in hockey continued to grow, Bauer felt the need to move faster than their platform was allowing them—new features and functionality were not being released as quickly as they wanted to move, and changes to page designs often required significant development work.
With custom projects like hockey stick warranties, internationalization, and a new loyalty program, Bauer knew they would face high development costs and long timelines if they didn’t make a change. Bauer began looking for a solution to reduce total ownership cost by simplifying their platform's complexity to allow for agility and growth.
The solution: Winning with a Shopify migration play
Bauer migrated to Shopify with the help of digital agency CQL. The new site pushes boundaries with an innovative design that engages users through:
- A new design with the flexibility to add new categories easily
- Third-party integrations with Klaviyo, Loop Returns, Avalara, and more
- A seamless integration with SAP for a better customer experience
- A loyalty program built on Yotpo
With their strategic replatform move, Bauer also benefits from increased ease of use through a new page designer tool, providing non-developers control to ramp up site content, assist shoppers with purchases, educate buyers on products, and build out storytelling throughout the site.
Bauer’s custom MVP loyalty program was launched using Yotpo and CQL’s custom development, in an effort to build stronger customer relationships by providing a practical, educational, and fun way to engage with the Bauer brand. Besides rewarding customers for online and in-store purchases, friend referrals, SMS, email subscriptions, and social media follows, Bauer’s loyalty program features a highly custom experience called “Shots,” which are chances to win giveaways and sweepstakes. By encouraging customers to actively “get in the game” by stacking up rewards and more chances to win sweepstakes, Bauer is driving higher average customer lifetime value, encouraging industry-leading likelihood to recommend, and building generational brand preference.
The result: Increased ability to innovate and faster speed to market
Since migrating to Shopify, Bauer has been able to save on their technology costs and shift those dollars to innovations that are driving results for the business. They’re also able to go to market with new features faster than they were previously.
Shopify’s checkout has also been powerful for Bauer, especially on mobile, contributing to an 18% conversion rate increase and a 30% order increase.
Overall, Bauer has seen a 60% year-over-year increase in revenue since moving to Shopify due to lower costs, increased ability to innovate, and improved checkout experience.
The move to Shopify has been so beneficial to our business. We get so much out of the box, plus a huge pipeline of new features dropping regularly. And the Shopify ecosystem of apps and developers helps us move fast. This has let us shift focus from basic e-commerce feature development and maintenance to high-value areas for our consumers, like content creation and loyalty.
