Ryonet Finds Ease and Speed for Both Its Online Wholesale Businesses

Ninety days. That was all it had. In late 2017, Ryonet launched its online apparel company, Allmade, on Shopify. It was a test. Succeed, and Ryonet would also bring over the online portal of its flagship business, operating at nearly $50M in annual revenue. What Ryonet coveted was speed, a faster site complete with the ease of use to please its wholesale customers. Get them in. Get them out. That was the way to greater B2B conversions. Did Allmade prove Ryonet’s gamble to be true? After three months, the results were in ...

• In 2017, Ryonet debuted its apparel line, Allmade, on Shopify. After increasing MoM sales 185%, Ryonet decided to bring over its flagship printing supply business, too 

• Ryonet’s B2B supply arm, ScreenPrinting, coveted speed and ease of use for its online wholesale customers and ecommerce team

• ScreenPrinting launched on Shopify in June. But as the online portal of Ryonet’s nearly $50M annual operation – and with 10X the traffic of Allmade – how would it perform?

• Not only did the business maintain top organic search ranking, the move cut load time in half and improved abandoned cart recovery more than 10X

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Late last year, the Washington-based B2B company Ryonet debuted a new arm of its business – Allmade, high-quality blank apparel for the screen printing industry.

This was something of a departure for Ryonet. Over 14 years – the last eight of which were found at ScreenPrinting.com – it had also run a profitable wholesale enterprise selling screen printing equipment and supplies.

“We offered basically everything you need to create a decorated shirt, except for the shirt itself,” says Shawn Zimmerman, the company’s ecommerce manager. “We were passing on a significant market opportunity.”

So it was that Ryonet moved into a new segment of its industry. If things went well with Allmade, the executive team at Ryonet would agree to also bring to Shopify ScreenPrinting – its much larger, much more established equipment and supply business.

“Prove it,” they said, “with Allmade.” Zimmerman got to work.

‘Speed is Far and Away the Biggest Thing We’ve Noticed’

For some time, Zimmerman had been part of a small group within Ryonet advocating for Shopify.

But ScreenPrinting was doing well, revenue each year into the seven figures. There would have to be a real, tangible reason to change ecommerce partners.

Allmade had three months to prove itself. “December to March,” Zimmerman says. “That was our 90-day trial period.”

Results seemed to come even swifter than that.

“Pretty much immediately following the Allmade launch, great feedback from our customers flooded in,” Zimmerman says. “It’s super easy to order. It’s fast. Speed – I’d say, if I could pick anything right now, speed is far and away the biggest thing we’ve noticed.”

That was no small variable, and in speed Zimmerman believed he had a great case to bring to his team of execs.

Both Allmade and ScreenPrinting are primarily wholesale businesses, about 90% of combined revenues arriving via B2B sales. Speed, especially for its wholesale customers, could mean big returns for Ryonet.

“Time is money,” Zimmerman says. “They need to get in and out as quickly as possible.”

Ryonet’s executives knew the stakes of making a switch for its larger business, which receives ten times the traffic of Allmade. But Allmade seemed to be proving Shopify’s mettle.

Even in January, its second month of sales, Allmade’s revenue was up 185% from its December debut.

Ryonet decided to make the switch for its hallmark outfit. On June 28, ScreenPrinting went live on Shopify.

Now the real test had begun.

Multiple Online Wholesale Storefronts, One Experience

The re-launch of ScreenPrinting’s site meant Ryonet now had two storefronts to manage on Shopify.

But what was once a concern has been proven an asset.

“The ease of use,” says Zimmerman. “We are able to do 2-3X the amount of work now in the same amount of time.

I manage both sites, and before I was basically struggling to manage just one. So this is a very easy-to-use tool. It just works.

Zimmerman has also been able to ensure both Allmade and ScreenPrinting feel like the same business, even if they operate under different brands. The two now function more directly as complementary sites.

“Any new customer that Allmade finds, we want to basically use that as an introduction to ScreenPrinting,” Zimmerman says. “And vice versa.”

No matter that is has been early, the signposts of success have already come for Ryonet’s breadwinner business.

To begin, there is SEO. A common concern for companies porting large amounts of data to a new ecommerce partner is, “Will we lose our rank on Google? Will all that hard-earned search value be for naught when our new site goes live?”

But Ryonet, upon arriving to Shopify, has maintained its SEO brilliance. For some of its most valuable keywords … Ryonet. Still. Ranks. (Even beating out marketplace competitors like Amazon and Yelp.)

Organic results from Google Incognito for some of Ryonet’s most valuable keywords

Then, there were abandoned carts. Before, ScreenPrinting was only able to recover about 2.5% of customers who had left its site without completing their checkout.

Emails sent to would-be shoppers simply asked them to please come back and review their carts. Yet if they’d left their site session, often a blank page would appear, or their cart would show zero items inside upon return. “A pretty horrible experience,” Zimmerman says.

But now, with Shopify, abandoned cart links are sent as unique URLs. Direct hyperlinks bring customers back to their precise cart as they left it, no matter the device they use to select items in the first place.

Already, Zimmerman says, ScreenPrinting has been able to recover about 26% of its abandoned carts with Shopify – more than 10X the previous rate.

‘Business Just Keeps Getting Better and Better’

Of course, it is all about the speed.

Online wholesale customers are hyper-focused on what they need. They want a responsive site. They want fast checkouts. They will not tolerate delays.

Now, ScreenPrinting’s site is lightning quick, trimming its average page load – 6.6 seconds down to 3.7 seconds – nearly in half since replatforming with Shopify.

“We have an average of eight pages per session, so if you do the math there, that’s almost 25 seconds of just page load that is wiped away, so they can get in and out and keep their total session time to sub-three minutes,” says Zimmerman. In this business, he notes, “that’s a big deal.”

The same built-for-speed and ease-of-use approach is present in three additional features.

First, ScreenPrinting’s onsite search bar — powered by Shopify Technology Partner Instant Search + — includes:

1. Banner ads for Allmade
2. Default popular products as guides
3. Live search suggestions and autocomplete
4. Error tolerance for common misspellings
5. In-search visual merchandising and prices
6. Results for product names, categories, descriptions, and order codes (like SKUs for B2B buyers that know exactly what they want)

Second, a live chat optimized both for desktop and mobile, with functionality built-in to reference previously-visited product pages:

Third, ecommerce automation – using tools like Shopify Scripts for line item discounts at checkout, hiding and displaying payment options (e.g., terms for select B2B accounts), and shipping. The site also leverages Shopify Flow to identify and tag loyalty program members, as well as at-risk orders:

It all works so smoothly, so quickly, though Ryonet has shown speed will not intimidate it. The company wasted no time identifying its most suitable ecommerce partner. Then, in a blink, it made the switch.

Zimmerman has been proven a prophet.

“It’s just been pluses on pluses,” he says. “Everywhere we’ve turned, business just keeps getting better and better.”