Sunology enters 3 European markets in just 1 month with Shopify Plus

The climate emergency, the issue of energy has now become a top concern for many households. Since its inception in late 2019, Sunology has established itself as the leading brand in Europe to democratize solar power, making this inexhaustible renewable energy accessible for everyone, everywhere.

In order to achieve this large-scale energy transition, the company needed to implement a scalable ecommerce solution that matched its ambition while also supporting its rapid growth and international expansion.

With Shopify Plus, Sunology has:

• Launched a customized e-commerce platform in just a few days.
• Entered three new European markets in just four weeks.
• Successfully handled exceptional demand spikes, reaching up to 13,000 simultaneous shopping carts.

Challenge

In early 2022, the outbreak of a new conflict in Ukraine reshaped the landscape and destabilized the energy market, causing widespread inflation. This swiftly emerged as a major concern for the French population. Vincent Arrouet, CEO and co-founder of Sunology, noted that while 80% of people expressed their willingness to adopt solar energy, only 3% of them actually made the switch. Hence, Sunology, which seeks to promote this specific form of renewable energy through, among other things, customizable and pre-fabricated solar stations, emerged as an ideal solution to aid, educate and reassure both homeowners and renters in making this transition.With the goal of equipping 'everyone, everywhere' with solar energy, Sunology opted for e-commerce distribution from the outset. The company started its mission in 2020 with WordPress and WooCommerce, but quickly encountered issues related to flexibility and responsiveness.

Solution

In late 2020, in a period of rapid growth, the company significantly increased its monthly revenue. It quickly became obvious that WooCommerce would not be able to support this long-term growth. The Sunology platform needed a more flexible solution capable of ongoing development and the capacity to manage larger order volumes, which led to its migration to Shopify and then Shopify Plus. In addition to the platform's many high-value features, Arrouet also believed it was the wisest financial choice. While WordPress is an open-source solution with no subscription fees, it incurs significant additional costs in terms of development and project management, which would have eventually exceeded the price of the Shopify Plus package.

Arrouet also highlights the speed of implementation of the Shopify Plus suite. Without using pre-established templates, Sunology's customized platform was ready in just a few days.

Sunology provides complex and customizable products. Therefore, the use of Shopify Scripts, one of the most powerful applications in the suite, allowed the company to create a configurator to manage the bill of materials for custom elements. That way, each customer can design a solar station that precisely matches their needs. In addition to streamlining and automating this process, Scripts also optimized the payment aspect by providing a tailored shopping experience.

Shopify's international sales tools, the international module of Shopify Plus that helps identify, set up, launch, optimize, and manage different markets from a single store, aligned with Sunology's international growth ambitions. The Localize app, which easily translates store content from one language to another, also greatly facilitated this expansion.

Lastly, the integrated Shopify Payments system has also proven to be a crucial tool for Sunology. This seamless payment solution works the same way in all countries and includes multi-currency management.

Results

In addition to a significant increase in conversion rates, Arrouet highlights the robustness and scalability of the Shopify Plus suite. After a feature on Sunology was aired on the popular TV program 'Capital' on M6 on October 23, 2022, the company's website was inundated to the point where shareholders feared the platform might crash. Shopify Plus's real-time analytics tools recorded over 13,000 open shopping carts on the site simultaneously. Thanks to Shopify Plus, the spike in demand was managed without any hiccups, and Sunology could fulfill every customer's request. The company generated a revenue of over 500,000 euros in a single day.

However, according to Arrouet, one of the greatest advantages of Shopify Plus is undoubtedly its speed of configuration. Besides the fast launching of its platform, with only 5 days of development despite the complexity and customized nature of the products, the company was also able to easily expand internationally. In the summer of 2023, thanks to applications like Market, Localize, and Payments, Sunology automated a significant number of processes and easily adapted its website content for new countries: The company was able to enter the British, German, and Spanish markets in less than four weeks.

With Shopify Plus, Sunology saw results fast.

• 5 days developed and launched their initial platform quickly
• 3 countries in 4 weeks expanded to new international markets in record time
• 13K simultaneous shopping carts faced exceptional demand peaks (600,000 euros in revenue in one day)

With Shopify Plus, Sunology has equipped itself with a tool that matches its ambitions, but the company's managers are already thinking about what comes next. They are planning the imminent adoption of B2B, a suite of features enabling the sale of products to businesses through the online store, managing aspects such as payment terms or connecting multiple clients and locations under a single company profile, should allow Sunology to strengthen its reach and pursue its growth.