Case Study: How Shopify Doubled YoY Sales for this Fashion Wholesaler

In this Shopify success story:

• About the client
• The challenge
• Why did Goondiwindi Cotton choose to work with Swanky?
• The solution
• The results
• What does the client think?
• What’s next for Goondiwindi Cotton?

About the client

Australian wholesale fashion brand Goondiwindi Cotton is home to premium ladies fashion and high-quality natural-fibre apparel. With timeless, effortless style at the core of their offering, this family-owned brand is ‘built on the old-fashioned and honest principles synonymous with the people of the Australian bush’. 

Goondiwindi Cotton products are stocked  in hundreds of brick-and-mortar stores across Australia, as well as by a number of online retailers. They also sell clearance items and last-season stock direct to consumers via their website.

Accordingly, the Goondiwindi Cotton website has two main objectives:

1. Enabling wholesale

Raising awareness of stockists across the country and generating leads for them.

2. Direct-to-consumer

Selling clearance items and last-season stock direct to consumers.

The challenge

A fashion wholesaler in need of a makeover

This multi-million dollar fashion label had been operating their online retail outlet on a custom-built legacy ecommerce setup for the last decade. 

In the words of Goondiwindi Cotton’s Senior Designer, Marianne Marshall:

“Goondiwindi Cotton was ready for an online makeover. It’d been over 10 years since we last updated our website. Our brand and user experience were outdated, and overall, it didn’t reflect the quality of our product or enhance the perception of our brand in the marketplace.

Whilst our business and product had evolved significantly over the years, our online channels were letting us down when it came to customers researching and considering our range to purchase in store and online.”

The new Goondiwindi Cotton site needed to convey a refreshed brand image aligned to the true values of the label and their products, whilst providing a smooth user experience to assist with lead and sales generation.

But it wasn’t just the customer-facing site that needed a makeover, as Marianne explained:

“Additionally, reporting and backend administration was also a challenge. Part of the brief was also to look at bringing this in-house so we could better control the administration of communications on the website and with our database, as well as controlling stock levels and pricing updates in real time.” 

Why did Goondiwindi Cotton choose to work with Swanky?

Goondiwindi Cotton were on the lookout for a specialist team to help them turn their ecommerce vision into a reality. Who knew that a chance phone call from Swanky’s Sean Clanchy would soon transform into a successful partnership!

“Funnily enough we received a call one day at the office from Sean (Director of Swanky Australia). It was pure luck that we were looking to engage an online specialist when Sean called. Finding these in regional Australia can be pretty tough! 

It turned out Sean had seen our brand in one of our major retailers and decided to directly contact us to see if Swanky could help. Sean came from a country background in Australia, growing up in South East Queensland not too far from Goondiwindi. We instantly felt as though he understood our business and customer.

From there, we kicked off discussions and Swanky’s wealth of knowledge has helped transition our business into the next generation of ecommerce.”

Sean Clanchy, Director of Swanky Australia and our Head of Optimisation, visiting Goondiwindi Cotton HQ.

How Swanky helped

Our objective was to create a fresh, elegant Shopify store with the flexibility and stability required to grow Goondiwindi Cotton’s B2B and B2C operations. 

Here are some of our store highlights:

Design and UX

Through a combination of beautiful lifestyle images, refined typography and a neutral colour palette, Goondiwindi Cotton’s new website reflects their values as an authentic, premium brand. 

The theme allows for effective visual storytelling, with high-res imagery capturing attention and showcasing this fashion brand’s unique character. It appeals directly to the target audience, helping to establish meaningful connections with customers.

The full-width Instagram feed is a modern touch, enhancing the perception of the brand within the market. The mix of product and lifestyle images within the feed further encapsulates the spirit of Goondiwindi Cotton, whilst creating a sense of desire amongst shoppers.

A new visual mega menu provides a much improved navigation experience, whilst also highlighting key collections.

The refreshed layout makes for a smoother user journey, as does the new button-select filter design, complete with colour swatches.

Across this new store, user-friendliness has been prioritised in order to provide a clean simple purchase flow. For example, a size availability overlay appears upon mouseover of product images on collection pages, contributing to a streamlined user journey. This satisfies users’ need for product information, without them having to click through to another page.

via GIPHY

Automating business processes

We also worked with the Goondiwindi Cotton team to update their back-end admin processes. In any business, there are those small but necessary tasks that together devour productivity. Our aim was to streamline and automate these processes where possible, which would allow the team to focus on what matters most – growing their business.

Automating store reviews with Okendo

One example of this is our implementation of customer marketing platform, Okendo. Built specifically for high-performance Shopify retailers like Goondiwindi Cotton, Okendo captures and showcases product ratings, layered reviews and user-submitted content.

Each review on the Goondiwindi Cotton store includes a customer profile (including age and measurements), star rating, written comments and feedback on product quality, comfort and sizing.

via GIPHY

Reviews have been proven to increase customer trust by establishing brand credibility and product confidence. If shoppers can see clear social validation of a product they are interested in, they are more likely to convert this interest into a purchase.

Okendo has been received well by Goondiwindi Cotton, explains the team’s marketing and events expert, Jade Mackay:

“The inclusion of review app Okendo has seen great reviews on a range of garments in our collection, and automation has assisted greatly with the collection of data.”

Marketing and email automation with Klaviyo

We also worked with Goondiwindi Cotton to implement an abandoned cart email flow using marketing automation tool Klaviyo. 

Cart abandonment emails are one of the most valuable emails for an ecommerce business. They motivate customers to return to your site, therefore helping to recover sales. These emails can also build customers’ relationships with your brand, increasing trust and loyalty. 

Klaviyo’s abandoned cart flow is triggered when a customer begins the checkout process, and continues if the purchase isn’t made. Merchants are able to fully customise the content of the emails, and edit the flow based on cart value amongst other factors.

The results

Goondiwindi Cotton’s new site was unveiled to the world at the end of February 2019. Before long, the positive impact of this beautiful new Shopify store became evident.

In just the first month following the launch of their new site, their year-on-year sales doubled! 

By the middle of May, they had seen over 10,000 unique visits to the site, with users spending 4 minutes and 15 seconds online. They’re also seeing multiple sales per transaction, with a clear increase in average revenue per user.

Stockists and customers alike have passed on their praise about the new store, with the team receiving plenty of positive feedback to date. A true Shopify success story!

What does the client think?

How did the team at Goondiwindi Cotton find working with Swanky?

“We joined Swanky amidst the start-up of their business in Australia,” explains Senior Designer Marianne. 

“With a small team, we enjoyed working on a one-on-one basis to extend our knowledge in the online space and build the platform that was perfect for us. 

Swanky are straight up, incredibly knowledgeable and have proven to deliver a great product in a timely manner. It’s been a great experience and a relationship now that we will continue to nurture as we look to grow our business online and in Australia.” 

The Shopify ecosystem includes a wealth of partners, experts and apps that will help merchants scale their business and run it in the smartest way possible. This is something that Jade and Marianne particularly enjoyed during Goondiwindi Cotton’s ecommerce project.

“We also enjoyed working with the expertise of third party partners such as Justuno to enhance our understanding of the platform and get the most of our new website.”

What’s next for this Shopify success story?

With Swanky’s help, Goondiwindi Cotton now have a fresh new Shopify store that reflects the effortless elegance of their products, as well as the core values of the brand. 

Crucially, this shiny new site will provide this ambitious brand with the flexibility and stability that it needs to scale and grow both its direct-to-consumer and wholesale operations. With backend admin processes streamlined, the team now have the ability and resources to focus on boosting brand awareness and directing traffic to their store.

“Previously, we’ve invested the bulk of our marketing spend in print, with limited ability to track results directly to our spend,” explains marketer Jade.

“As we move forward, we’d like to look at how digital advertising can play a bigger role in driving brand awareness and foot traffic to our site. Additionally, building an ‘always on’ social media strategy and enhancing SEO and organic traffic will be a priority.”

This project highlights the improvements that can be made just by redesigning pages, before any A/B testing or specific conversion rate optimisation initiatives. We look forward to exploring these other avenues with Goondiwindi Cotton to drive further growth.

Does your store need a Shopify makeover?

If, like Goondiwindi Cotton, your ecommerce store is in need of a redesign, then why not get in touch with our friendly team of ecommerce experts? We have years of experience designing and building beautiful, commercially-optimised ecommerce sites for clients across the globe.