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What it takes to have a successful Shopify store
7 Shopify websites in high-growth mode
Building a successful Shopify store is an art and a science. As a top order fulfillment provider for some of the best ecommerce sites, we love working with online retailers that have seen amazing business growth selling on Shopify.
What it takes to have a successful Shopify store
Even with a powerful ecommerce platform like Shopify, building an ecommerce business is hard — just ask any of the top-selling Shopify stores. From landing page optimizations and social media to inventory management and shipping your Shopify store orders, your attention and time are divided between a million things at once.
One secret to running a successful Shopify store? Knowing when to take something off your plate.
Time is a precious resource for anyone running a growing ecommerce store. Spending time on fulfillment-related tasks instead of focusing on business development, for example, can prevent you from scaling your business to its full potential.
You can’t do everything yourself, which is why it’s important to form and leverage partnerships, so you can focus on building a successful Shopify store.
7 Shopify websites in high-growth mode
There’s no silver bullet to building a thriving Shopify store. Every online store has a different journey — and we can learn a lot from the obstacles and successes of each one.
Here are 7 Shopify websites and online store strategies to learn from:
1. Ombraz
Traditional sunglasses can easily break or get lost. That’s why the founders of Ombraz created an armless, unbreakable alternative. Ombraz patented design comes with frames that are attached to an adjustable cord.
Ombraz became a quick hit and crowd-funded over $150,000 to get their product off the ground. As a team of two, Ombraz needed a simple yet powerfully effective tech stack. That’s why they turned to Shopify, ShipBob, and other tools to streamline their growing business.
“Since we’re a team of two, our entire tech stack is very simple. Our online store is on Shopify, and we use tools like Privy, Lucky Orange, Loop, and MailChimp for marketing purposes, and of course, ShipBob for everything fulfillment.”
Nikolai Paloni, Co-Founder of Ombraz Sunglasses
With fulfillment taken care of, the Ombraz team can focus on next steps for their business: going global.
“Ultimately, our goal is to focus on creating new styles and we need the right international fulfillment partner to do that. At the end of the day, it comes down to costs and customer service, and ShipBob crushes it in both areas.”
Nikolai Paloni, Co-Founder of Ombraz Sunglasses
2. Sharkbanz
Sharkbanz is on a mission to reduce the risk of shark attacks for surfers, ocean researchers, and general beachgoers. Their patent-pending wearable technology creates an electromagnetic field that deters sharks but is imperceptible to humans.
As their popularity grew, so did their orders.
“When we first started the company, we only sold direct-to-consumer through our Shopify store, so fulfilling orders wasn’t a huge issue — but once we started to gain traction and then expanded to selling through retailers, we realized that we needed to outsource fulfillment.”
Nathan Garrison, Co-Founder and CEO of Sharkbanz
Sharkbanz tried out several 3PLs but couldn’t find one that offered both excellent customer service and user-friendly data and analytics — that is, until ShipBob.
“Finally, we found ShipBob, which gave us the best of both worlds and offered a true fulfillment platform. Our Merchant Success Manager provides excellent customer service, and ShipBob’s merchant-facing software is really intuitive to navigate. We love that ShipBob integrates directly to our website and our other ecommerce software we use, and that it gives us real-time data on inventory, order volume, warehouse processes, and shipments. Discovering that one provider could deliver all of these capabilities was a game-changer!”
Nathan Garrison, Co-Founder and CEO of Sharkbanz
3. MANSSION
MANSSION was born when its founder noticed a lack of stylish and affordable jewelry options for men. The MANSSION team sourced high-quality materials and thoughtfully curated their custom collection so when they officially launched their products in 2020, they experienced explosive growth.
In order to keep their operation running smoothly, they turned to proven experts in the fulfillment space: ShipBob. It was important that their 3PL seamlessly integrate into their tech stack.
“ShipBob works really well with our tech stack and partners with solutions we use like Klaviyo, Shopify, Gorgias, Route, and Loop Returns.”
Torii Rowe, COO & Co-Founder of MANSSION
As they look toward the future, MANSSION plans to keep scaling their brand with ShipBob by their side.
“Our customer base continues to grow across the globe. ShipBob has helped us tremendously. I’ve been really happy from the get go, and I look forward to growing more with ShipBob over the next few years.”
Torii Rowe, COO & Co-Founder of MANSSION
4. Nutripaw
The founders of Nutripaw wanted to start an ecommerce business that helped both people and pets. They were inspired to start Nutripaw in order to create natural remedies for common canine ailments (think: hip and joint care, itch relief, etc.).
The London-based company successfully launched their Shopify store and quickly knew they needed to outsource fulfillment.
“Fulfillment is one of the areas that we were super keen to outsource to a partner who’s been doing it for a while and knows how it’s done. We can trust ShipBob to support and handle fulfillment for us, so that we can focus on the strategic side of our business, helping us grow and develop much faster.”
Adelina Zotta, Co-Founder of NutriPaw
With fulfillment taken care of, Nutripaw can now focus on expanding the products they offer on their online store.
“With fulfillment and shipping outsourced to ShipBob, we can finally focus on expanding our product offering to better capture our customer needs. In the next few months we’ll be looking to release at least 2-4 new products.”
Adelina Zotta, Co-Founder of NutriPaw
5. Kula Cloth
Anastasia Allison founded Kula Cloth in 2018 and her business continues to grow. But it wasn’t an easy start. After launching a successful pre-sale, Anastasia found herself spending most of her time printing labels and fulfilling orders from home.
But after learning how easy it is to connect her Shopify store with ShipBob’s technology, she decided to partner with ShipBob. Now, she’s able to fulfill 3x more orders by doing less.
“I found myself on vacation constantly checking on new orders, finding wifi to print labels, and shipping inventory out of the back of my car. Now, I’m free. I could not have gone backpacking for 3 days without ShipBob.”
Anastasia Allison, founder of Kula Cloth
By outsourcing fulfillment, Anastasia is able to spend her time expanding her business, such as designing new kula prints and establishing partnerships with nature gear and backpack companies.
6. Brummell
Steve Saffan is familiar with high growth mode. He came up with and launched men’s lifestyle brand Brummell in under 2.5 months. Right before the holidays. While working his full-time finance job.
To launch his Shopify store and sock subscription service, he partnered with a major satirical Wall Street Twitter accounts, GSElevator. Locking in the social media aspect before launching his online store to 1 million followers meant the pressure was on to get everything done on time — and well.
“I have the ShipBob app open next to the Shopify app and get to respond to emails and work on new product development — and never have to pack any socks.”
Steve Staffan, Founder and CEO of Brummell
In addition to choosing the right ecommerce platform in Shopify, Steve found another strategic partnership in ShipBob. One day after Steve received 15,000 units of socks to his apartment, the inventory was in ShipBob’s Chicago fulfillment center. The next day, Brummell was successfully shipping orders out to customers.
“I can’t express enough how happy I have been to work with ShipBob. They have been instrumental to both the start-up stage and growth of our company.”
Steve Staffan, Founder and CEO of Brummell
Brummell went from zero units sold to 5,000 in the first month and have been growing ever since. And from celebrity endorsements and sponsorships to building out a referral program and expanding into new product lines, the Brummell team has big plans for the future.
7. Ample Meal
Ample Meal was founded by Connor Young, who was looking for an easy way to eat healthier while working long hours. After making a drinkable meal that aligned with emerging research for a couple friends, the response was so positive that he decided to take his idea to Indiegogo.
Ample Meal ended up being the number one most-funded nutrition project on Indiegogo at the time, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t growth pains. Ample Meal had partnered with a 3PL that didn’t meet expectations early on, so they quickly made the switch to ShipBob.
“Our [ShipBob] Account Manager has worked hard to understand our needs and offered more flexibility than other 3PLs.”
Pablo Gabatto, Business Operations Manager at Ample Foods
Along with offering order fulfillment services, ShipBob’s easy integration with Shopify has helped Ample Meal better manage subscription orders, which has played a significant role in Ample’s business growth.
ShipBob distribution for Shopify stores
ShipBob is a third-party logistics (3PL) solution that helps online retailers that want to run the best Shopify stores offer faster, more cost-effective shipping to meet customers’ expectations every day. Here’s how partnering with ShipBob can help Shopify merchants grow and scale.
Integrate your Shopify store in minutes
ShipBob seamlessly integrates with Shopify, making it possible for you to link your online store and import your products and orders with the click of a button. The backend work is already done for you, so you can get started without any e-commerce developer work, saving you any further web development costs.
Order and inventory data is pushed automatically between ShipBob’s dashboard and the Shopify ecommerce platform. This two-way flow of information offers transparent insight into your orders, inventory, fulfillment centers, shipments, customers, and more.
Automate the fulfillment process
When an order is placed on your Shopify store, ShipBob’s software automatically routes the order to ShipBob’s to be filled fast and efficiently by fulfillment experts.
Plus, once an order has shipped, ShipBob can automatically send tracking information back to your Shopify store, so your customers stay in the loop every step of the way.
Ship from the largest US markets
ShipBob allows online retailers to store their ecommerce inventory across a network of urban fulfillment centers in major US cities and regions across the country. This can reduce shipping costs and time in transit by shipping from a location that’s actually close to your end customer.
Offer guaranteed 2-day shipping
ShipBob also allows online retailers to offer guaranteed 2-day shipping — and reduce shopping cart abandonment — through the 2-Day Express Shipping Program (available for all ecommerce stores). In fact, this program is used by some of the top-selling Shopify stores.
Start shipping with ShipBob
Each of the five stores we mentioned has a unique story, but their commonality is the ShipBob and Shopify tech stack. They’ve been able to achieve this level of scalability in part by leveraging our technology, network of fulfillment centers, and partnerships.
Ready to scale and grow your Shopify store (and become one of the successful Shopify stores we write about in the future)? Start fulfilling orders for your Shopify store through ShipBob.
