Necessity is the mother of invention. Stoov, which sells heated blankets and cushions to chilly customers across Europe, was born when Dutch entrepreneur Teun van Leijsen stitched the heating element of a car seat into a cushion so his wife could stay warm on their terrace in the evenings.
From this, the idea to make infrared heated cushions with an attractive design was born.
Since moving to Shopify Plus, Stoov has seen:
- An increase in sales from 10,000 cushions and beds in 2019 to 500,000 last year
- A 27% conversion rate increase between 2021 and 2022
- International expansion: 50% of sales coming from Germany alone
Challenge
Before moving to Shopify Plus, Stoov was a young company ready to scale up. Teun and his team knew what they needed to do: increase their customer base by increasing their product range and expanding internationally.
While founded in the Netherlands, the team saw the huge potential of trading with their European neighbours. However with their previous platform, Lightspeed, this just wasn’t possible - the platform lacked the features needed to grow cross-border effectively.
Specifically, Stoov had a lot of products to offer – too many for its Lightspeed store to handle, in fact. They had a few core products, but a lot of variations, which all needed different SKUs. This tripped Lightspeed’s SKU limit, so Stoov couldn’t make all of its products available for customers to buy online.
Enter Shopify.
Solution
Stoov made the jump to Shopify Plus. With the help of a partner agency, Code, the team built an all-new store, with a new design and new templates.
This fresh start with Shopify Plus made it easy for Stoov to scale up. Simple app integrations, like Klaviyo and Gorgeous enabled the team to set up everything they needed to run their fully online business, from email marketing to customer service. They now use 30 different apps which make it easy for them to fulfil their ambitions.
The ability to customise every part of the store for specific countries also meant that growing cross-border was a seamless next step. And increasing the number of products they offer? No problem with Shopify.
There are no limits on the number of products we can have with Shopify – so we were able just to put everything on our online store.
Results
The growth Stoov has seen since making the switch has been huge. The brand has gone from selling 10,000 cushions and beds in 2019 to half a million in 2022 alone. Conversion rates are also rising year on year, and jumped from 2.2% in 2021 to 2.8% in 2022.
Stoov is also enjoying the success of its cross-border approach; Germany is now its biggest market and 50% of all sales come from their German store. This triumph has also inspired the team to grow beyond Europe.
We would like to expand to the United States. It will be a big thing, but it's on our list. There are also talks about growing to Australia! With Shopify Plus we can now go everywhere.
The data from Stoov's Shopify store has also helped the team get to know their customers better. As a result, they are redesigning their Shopify store once more with the help of Code and a design agency, Bolden. This new look store will also include the newly improved Shopify Checkout announced in Shopify's 2023 Summer Editions, and will be a key step in their next stage of growth.
