It’s not every day that a blender is launched into the cosmos. But in 2021, a BlendJet 2 portable blender journeyed high above earth’s atmosphere and made the first smoothie in space.
“My team was very much in disbelief,” says BlendJet founder and CEO, Ryan Pamplin. “My biggest regret is that we didn't submit for the Guinness World Record.”
And although BlendJet has gained global notoriety for making healthy eating more convenient (even in space), its meteoric ascent from bootstrapped startup to industry leader may not have happened if not for a key moment in its founder’s life.
Pamplin suffered a devastating brain injury in 2017. In recovery, he put a renewed focus on his health, with smoothies and protein shakes becoming a daily ritual. But he found that the hassle of operating and cleaning bulky blenders made it harder than necessary to eat right. He launched BlendJet One the following year to tackle this issue head-on.
CHALLENGE
When BlendJet released the “Original Portable Blender” in June 2018, it sold out of its initial 7,000 units within weeks. Without having a warehouse to stock inventory and fulfill orders, the team spent nights packing boxes in the company’s office, which was filled with inventory from floor to ceiling. The company’s growth only accelerated from there.
“By the end of 2018, we had over 100,000 customers in 100 countries,” Pamplin says. “By the end of 2019, we had over a million. By the end of 2020 millions, and at the peak of 2022, we were selling one item on BlendJet.com or through major retail stores every one and a half seconds.”
Recognizing the importance of establishing a solid foundation for dynamic growth early on, BlendJet knew it needed a highly reliable ecommerce partner to support its rapid upward trajectory. With this in mind, the team chose to partner with Shopify from the beginning, ensuring a robust and scalable solution to empower its growth.
SOLUTION
The reliable infrastructure, infinite scalability, and diverse app and partner ecosystem of Shopify Plus have been key factors in enabling BlendJet’s astronomical rise.
“Reliability is one of the most important factors in ecommerce,” Pamplin says. “There are certain days of the year, and certain periods of the year, that are critical for sales. You want rock solid infrastructure year round, but those high periods are really the times when things tend to break and fail. Fortunately, such breakdowns have never plagued BlendJet.”
BlendJet quickly became a leader in the highly competitive blender market. As a robust, cloud-based platform, Shopify Plus provided an infrastructure that seamlessly scaled as sales went up. This allowed the team to keep focused on its strategic priorities instead of worrying about server crashes during high-traffic periods such as Black Friday/Cyber Monday or directly after high-profile TV appearances on The Ellen Show and The Kelly Clarkson Show.
The team has also continuously elevated its customer experience online through extensive customizations and app integrations on its website. BlendJet has harnessed the potential of Shopify’s vibrant app ecosystem to craft a tailored, world-class customer journey. The website boasts stellar conversion rates that are constantly improving as the team tests new optimizations and strategies with commerce optimization solution, Outsmartly, which directly integrates with the brand’s Shopify store.
Other key integrations the team has implemented include ReBuy, an upsell tool integrated into Shopify's highly customizable checkout process that has helped boost revenue; Loox, a photo review tool that has helped the brand build consumer trust and engagement as it garnered over 50,000 reviews; and Daasity, a data analytics and reporting tool that has provided actionable insights into customer behaviors and preferences.
ReBuy's checkout page upsell widget alone has contributed an additional 2% of incremental revenue to BlendJet.com, a testament to the power of strategic upselling and the unrivaled extensibility of Shopify's checkout.
RESULTS
With the Shopify Plus platform and its extensive ecosystem of apps and integrations, BlendJet elevated its online presence and transformed customer experiences.
Shopify Plus has been a growth partner for BlendJet, providing the tools, insights, and scalability necessary for the brand’s rapid ascent and market leadership. The flexible, scalable, and powerful capabilities of Shopify Plus stand ready to support BlendJet’s future growth ambitions, underscoring the platform's role as an enabler of ecommerce success.
What's great about a platform like Shopify Plus is that there's not a lot of work you have to do to maintain it. It just works. Shopify Plus does what it needs to do, and it gets better every day, so you can focus on figuring out how to have incredible product market fit and scale to the moon.