Petrolicious is an automotive media and community brand known for cinematic films about collector cars, their owners, and the people who build them. The team publishes a new film every Friday and has built a commerce model around their trusted stories. Shopify now supports the editorial experience, The Petrolicious Post subscription, curated products from automotive creators, international sales, and a faster path from discovery to checkout.
With Shopify, Petrolicious has:
- Expanded their product assortment through Shopify Collective without carrying inventory for most supplier products, while helping numerous automotive creators move their stores to Shopify and reach the Petrolicious audience.
- Processed half of their online orders through Shop Pay from launch through the present day.
- Grew The Petrolicious Post to thousands of subscribers, with continued month-over-month growth.
- Started seeing customers return through the Shop app and incremental traffic and sales from agentic search.
The challenge
Building a business model around automotive storytelling
When duPont REGISTRY Group acquired Petrolicious, the opportunity was to restore a respected media brand and build a business model that could support their next chapter. New ownership needed to preserve the automotive expertise and thoughtful storytelling that had earned the audience’s trust in the first place.
Petrolicious started with the work their audience already valued. In early 2025, the team brought back a weekly film cadence, releasing a new story every Friday. Commerce would follow the content rather than compete with it.
The business also needed one operating system for films, journal articles, recurring print, their own branded merchandise, products from automotive creators, customer accounts, and checkout. WordPress had supported the media experience, but the new business model needed to connect storytelling and commerce on a single platform.
The solution
Choosing Shopify for media and transactions
Michael Chapin, CEO of Petrolicious and president of duPont REGISTRY, decided to move the brand to Shopify in December 2024. The new site launched in March 2025.
Michael brought experience in automotive technology, product data, and ecommerce. Before joining Petrolicious, he founded PartsHub, which grew from a comparison-shopping engine for car parts into an automotive product data platform and was later acquired by SEMA. That background shaped how he approached the transition from a media brand to a commerce business.
Shopify gave his team an editorial-capable theme, a broad app and developer ecosystem, and the transactional foundation Petrolicious planned to build toward. Michael led most of the migration internally, using a commercial theme and a small developer service to transfer the existing blog content. This allowed Petrolicious to avoid a large custom implementation while keeping the team in control.
This was by far the cheapest and most efficient migration ever.
The approach kept implementation costs low and eliminated the need to build a transactional stack from scratch. Shopify also gave Petrolicious a single foundation for content, products, subscriptions, payments, customer accounts, international sales, and future channels.
Turning vendor-row discovery into creator commerce
Michael saw another way to connect Petrolicious’s storytelling and commerce when he discovered Shopify Collective. Traditional drop-shipping relationships can require teams to coordinate product data, inventory, orders, fulfillment, returns, and supplier payments across separate systems. Shopify Collective gave Petrolicious a way to connect Shopify stores and offer supplier products without carrying the inventory themselves.
The experience resembles walking down vendor row at a racetrack, where enthusiasts discover makers selling unusual parts, art, and collectibles. Many of these small businesses are difficult to find online. Petrolicious can introduce a creator through a film or article, explain why their work matters, and give the audience a direct way to buy their products.
We can use our power as a storytelling media company, layer it on top of a simple, cost-efficient tech stack, and use Collective to tell creators, ‘This is easy. Two clicks, I can sell your stuff.’ That’s the recipe I was looking for.
The assortment combines Petrolicious merchandise, Collective products, and a small number of products the team imports manually.
The team estimates that approximately four creators have already moved their own sites to Shopify to participate. Petrolicious has also produced approximately six monthly creator or artist features since starting the program.
The Collective assortment includes rare automotive literature and models from Albaco Collectibles, fine art from WALL OF VENUS, automotive illustrations from Alex Staidle Studios, and licensed goods from Steve McQueen Co.
Building a physical subscription into the digital model
Petrolicious added a recurring product in January 2026 with The Petrolicious Post, a $5.99 monthly newspaper. The physical format gives the community something intentionally different from another screen while creating a lower-priced first transaction for people who had previously watched films or read stories for free.
Appstle Subscriptions supports recurring billing and customer self-service. Shopify supports product discovery, checkout, customer accounts, and international market availability. An independent printer and fulfillment provider handle the physical newspaper and international distribution.
The results
Turning passive viewers into recurring customers
The Post now anchors Petrolicious’s recurring commerce model. Weekly films introduce the newspaper to the existing audience, paid media extends its reach, and the accessible monthly price gives viewers a clear way to support the brand. Petrolicious reports a subscriber base in the thousands and continued month-over-month growth.
It has taken off. We have thousands of subscribers now, and people tell us they read it on a Friday night with a scotch or on a Sunday morning with coffee.
Readers send Petrolicious photos showing the Post displayed in their homes and garages. One customer said reading an issue kept them away from their phone for 20 minutes, and some readers return to the paper several times during the month. Much of the content remains exclusive to print.
The newspaper also brings discovery back to the shop. Each issue includes photography, maker stories, and products for sale on the back page.
In a recent issue, we featured products from Steve McQueen Co. without a separate social promotion. When that newspaper landed that month, we started seeing sales immediately.
Preserving the content while shortening the path to purchase
The commerce model keeps storytelling at the center of the shopping experience. Films and articles explain who made an item, where it came from, and why another enthusiast might care. Purchasing the product becomes a natural next step in the story rather than an unrelated promotion.
Shopify shortens the path between interest and purchase. Michael estimated that a mobile customer can move from a Petrolicious film or Meta ad to the product page and complete checkout in roughly two clicks and a few seconds.
The Post’s $5.99 price also contributes to that conversion path.
Petrolicious attributes the business’s acceleration in order volume to the Post and the recurring transactions it generates. Because every subscription renewal generates another order, total order growth does not tell the full story. Subscriber retention, recurring revenue, and circulation provide a clearer picture of the model’s performance.
We see very little churn and strong retention. Every month extends the lifetime value of the customer.
Expanding a lean subscription model internationally
Petrolicious opened international Post sales through Shopify after establishing the US program. The team enabled additional markets in Shopify, while their printer and fulfillment provider route physical issues through local mail networks.
The operating roles remain clear. Shopify manages sales and customer relationships. Petrolicious’s print and fulfillment partners produce and distribute the newspaper. This division of roles lets a small team extend the subscription internationally.
Finding repeat demand through Shop and agentic search
The same transaction creates additional discovery opportunities. Petrolicious is beginning to see customers return through the Shop app for merchandise after their first purchase. Shop Pay accounts for half of online orders from March 2025 through July 2026.
Agentic search is another early channel. Petrolicious is starting to see incremental traffic or sales associated with AI-assisted discovery. The team plans to test Shop Campaigns as a future acquisition channel.
For now, subscriptions to the Post and products sold through Collective form the core of Petrolicious’s commerce model, while Shop and agentic search emerge as additional discovery channels.
Building the next marketplace around provenance
Petrolicious is now exploring one-of-one automotive collectibles as the next extension of the platform. The same object can mean more when the audience understands its provenance, who owned it, where it was used, and why it matters. Petrolicious can provide that context through film, photography, and editorial, and then connect an interested collector with the transaction.
This next phase follows the same principle that guided the move to Shopify. Petrolicious can keep investing in the work that builds trust with enthusiasts while the platform supports the transaction beside it.
Our first priority was having technology that empowers a near-frictionless transaction. The second was having technology that lets us continue being a media company. My advice to others is that they should double down on what made them successful.