How Shopify helped Viva streamline operations and save over $100k annually

Jennifer Wu and her partner Zach wanted to make fresh, healthy food for their beloved pup Karoo, but their demanding jobs left little time for that. This led them to launch Viva, a premium raw pet food company offering a unique line of chunked raw meals with a focus on transparency and quality.

From the jump, they chose Shopify as their ecommerce partner, as other platforms simply didn’t offer the functionalities and robustness the Viva founders needed.

With Shopify, Viva has been able to:

  • Save over $100k annually with address verification that they would have had to spend on additional carrier fees and package replacements.
  • Save ~$10k annually with Shopify Flow that they would have had to spend on other apps and manual effort.
  • Improve site speed by ~10% after switching to a Shopify 2.0 theme.

The challenge: Choosing the right platform for a growing business

When starting their business, Viva faced the challenge of selecting a platform that was not only easy to get started with, but also robust enough to support future growth. “The last thing we wanted to do was have to switch platforms once our business was bigger,” said Jennifer Wu, Co-founder of Viva.

She added, “We were just starting our business and wanted a platform that would allow us to easily tap into additional functionality later on as we scaled.” After evaluating options like Squarespace and WordPress, the Viva team realized that although those platforms were lower cost on the surface, their ecommerce and order management functionalities were not as robust as what they needed.

We looked at other solutions like Squarespace and Wordpress… it didn't seem like their ecommerce and order management functionalities were as robust.

Viva

Jennifer Wu — Co-founder

The solution: Shopify provided the ideal foundation for growth

Viva chose Shopify for its comprehensive ecommerce capabilities and strong ecosystem of integrations. The ability to seamlessly onboard third-party logistics (3PLs), helpdesks, and other apps was crucial for their long-term strategy. “We wanted to pick a platform that would allow us to focus on growing our business and not have to worry about scaling our site infrastructure,” Jennifer noted.

The ease of getting their Shopify site up and running within a few days further solidified their decision. This initial choice has allowed Viva to establish a solid foundation for their business, enabling them to focus on what matters most: their customers and product quality.

We wanted to pick a platform that would allow us to focus on growing our business and not have to worry about scaling our site infrastructure.

Viva

Jennifer Wu — Co-founder

The result: Significant operational efficiencies and cost savings

Since launching on Shopify, Viva has experienced transformative impacts on their operations. The robust ecosystem of apps and integrations has made it easy to enhance their store's functionality. Jennifer highlighted that Shopify Flow has been a game-changer for automating manual processes, significantly reducing reliance on other apps and saving costs.

“Shopify Flow saves us over $10k annually by reducing other app fees and saving time that team members would spend on manual tasks,” she shared. Additionally, Shopify Address Verification has saved them over $100k annually by avoiding carrier fees and package replacements due to undeliverable addresses.

Switching to a Shopify 2.0 theme also contributed to an estimated 10% increase in site speed, enhancing the overall customer experience. 

With Shopify, Viva continues to grow, leveraging an ever-expanding ecosystem that’s a key ingredient to their success. 

The main impact of Shopify is how robust of an ecosystem it has with apps to extend any sort of functionality you can imagine and ease of integration with other software & service providers.

Viva

Jennifer Wu — Co-founder



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