In 2016, three friends decided to bet on e-commerce and launch their own project to make a living from something they were passionate about. This desire would materialize in an online brand of sneakers: Morrison. A project that sought to take advantage of the excellent quality of the Spanish footwear industry, combining it with a fresh, fun, and daring design vision.
Today, Morrison has more than 500 points of sale throughout Europe and three physical stores in Spain (Two in Madrid and one in Sevilla). Its iconic sneakers are sold halfway around the world, and its e-commerce is a growth engine for Morrison.
Morrison is doing great. And their ambitious goal is to position themselves as the reference brand of Spanish footwear. But this has only been possible thanks to five years of learning within the e-commerce world, a technology partner that provided them with accurate solutions, and a migration to Shopify Plus.
By migrating to Shopify Plus, Morrison achieved the following:
- No more dependency on programmers to introduce basic changes.
- Stability and no more downtime or crashes during traffic peaks which allowed for a +15% ecommerce conversion rate.
- Integrated management of physical stores, B2B, and e-commerce on one platform which allowed a +10% in physical store sales thanks to Shopify POS activation
Challenge
Morrison began its digital adventure thanks to crowdfunding using Kickstarter. The brand’s first online iteration was made with Prestashop, and for its founders, the initial idea was to be a 100% online brand without a physical presence. Therefore, e-commerce was fundamental.
However, any changes they had to make in Prestashop - even simple changes for day-to-day operations - forced them to seek the help of a programmer. The website was a mess and could not be touched anywhere because even minor changes could cascade and throw everything out of configuration.
The vulnerability of their website became even more evident during the first traffic peaks.Morrison had horrible experiences in three consecutive Black Fridays, a crucial moment for sales where customers can be lost forever, if the brand fails to deliver during this popular date. And in each Black Friday sales peak, Morrison had a section of the site crashing or the entire website going down.
For the brand it was impossible to sell on Black Friday. Or for that matter, at any other time when they had a lot of web traffic. Their website became slow and crashed constantly during high traffic peaks. This meant that they were losing money and failing their customers. The technology of their e-commerce was a constraint they had struggled with for the first five years of their life.
I used to ask a lot of people what to do to avoid having website crashes during Black Friday, and they would always recommend switching to Shopify Plus. I think that's what technology should be, a help, never a constraint. And Shopify Plus has been a help to grow.
In addition to the instability of the website, Morrison had an extra problem with Prestashop, as the brand expanded its business from online to physical stores and B2B.
Morrison's inventory and pricing system for their three different business lines was mixed together in Prestashop: national market - in Spain - and international market, as well as online and physical prices.
This sometimes caused Morrison to run into the problem that, during a weekend, the physical stores in Madrid had products marked with the wrong prices, mixing the international online prices and sales, and the Madrid physical store prices and specific sales. A disaster that they could not solve without professional help.
Solution
Looking for greater stability, less dependence on programmers, and an omnichannel integration that would help them consolidate B2B, physical stores, and e-commerce, Morrison approached Reduncle, one of the Shopify partner agencies in Spain.
With Reduncle's help, they began migrating Morrison's Prestashop store to a solution built with Shopify Plus. The process took just three months, and no sales had to be halted or frozen, and the brand suffered no setbacks during the migration.
In fact, on the very day of the migration to Shopify, Morrison's turnover was 80% of normal, and the next day, they were back to their normal figures.
It was a smooth process. We practically shut down Prestashop and started Shopify. The user experience was good from the start, and we didn't lose turnover. Which, for me, was a great achievement.
Thanks to the migration to Shopify Plus, the problem of managing different prices - international and domestic, online and physical - was solved in 100% of the cases by using Shopify POS as the integration system.
In addition, the migration to Shopify Plus has allowed Morrison to operate without any fear of downtime due to increased traffic. This is because Shopify Plus is specifically designed to handle these traffic spikes, thanks to its high scalability.
Results
By migrating to Shopify Plus, Morrison has been able to overcome critical obstacles to its growth. The first of these obstacles overcome was the unification of management of its physical stores, B2B, and e-commerce under a single platform.
This has allowed the brand to develop an actual omnichannel strategy, thus helping its expansion process in Europe and internationally.
Secondly, Morrison has finally achieved a stable online store capable of converting and processing sales without crashes or problems during large traffic peaks. This opens up the possibility for Morrison to take advantage of iconic dates such as Black Friday but also allows them to unleash their full marketing power, which is essential for the brand's growth.
By migrating to Shopify Plus, Morrison has transformed its e-commerce from being an obstacle to its growth to becoming the best tool to get its iconic sneakers and designs to all cities worldwide.