Tony's Chocolonely: Ethical Chocolate on a Mission
Two decades ago, Dutch TV journalist Teun van de Keuken was shocked to learn about the prevalence of illegal labour in the chocolate supply chain. And so he set about to tackle it.
Teun (or in English, Tony) wanted to prove there was a better way. He worked with his fellow journalists and TV crew to make 5,000 Fairtrade, traceable milk chocolate bars. Originally intended as a one off, these original Tony's Chocolonely bars were a hit and revealed the demand for ethically-made chocolate. The brand was born.
Tony's Chocolonely have since grown rapidly, increasing revenue growth and expanding across DTC, B2B and reseller channels while remaining focused on their mission to end exploitation.
To ensure technical constraints wouldn't hold them back, Tony's Chocolonely turned to Ask Phill, one of Europe's leading ecommerce agencies, to support a migration to Shopify that would improve scalability, unify commerce operations and streamline their customer experience.
Since moving to Shopify, the company has seen:
- 2.5x faster site speed
- One unified site, incorporating DTC, B2B and reseller operations
- Double-digit revenue growth across four key markets, including 70% in the US, aided by Shopify
Challenge: Migrating to a scalable and flexible platform
Tony's Chocolonely's previous ecommerce platform was a custom-built solution that had served the brand well during their earlier years but was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain – particularly as the business was growing internationally across DTC, B2B and reseller channels, each of which required custom functionalities. "We were spending more on maintenance and bug fixing than on new features for customers," says Chiel Versteeg, Platform Lead at Tony's Chocolonely.
The level of maintenance required also meant that the total cost of ownership (TCO) was rising. Scalability issues became apparent, particularly during peak activations where too many simultaneous checkouts would cause system failures. Site speed was also a problem and the lack of an integrated plugin ecosystem limited flexibility and innovation.
On top of this, the site needed a redesign to make the brand shine and enable teams to easily add or highlight products in a way that stayed consistent to their creative vision.
Our old solution wasn't scalable enough. We had to do patchwork fixes and custom integrations for everything. We were limited in our flexibility and we couldn't experiment – it was time to look elsewhere.
Solution: Unified commerce powered by Shopify
In 2023, after extensive research, Tony's Chocolonely chose Shopify for its scalability and performance, channel simplification and consolidation and its extensive app ecosystem. To facilitate the migration, the company partnered with Ask Phill, a Shopify-specialised agency based in the Netherlands. "We wanted an agency that understood Shopify inside out and could help us move fast," Versteeg explains. "Ask Phill stood out because of their track record and strong technical pitch," he adds.
With Ask Phill's support, and direction from Tony's Chocolonely's creative team, they seamlessly migrated to Shopify, which now acts as a redesigned and refreshed unified commerce platform for their DTC, B2B and reseller customers across six markets. With Shopify, they have a platform that can scale their impact, spotlight their brand and enable them to continue to innovate with the customer experience.
We used Matrixify to support the data migration from each different store into the new unified commerce setup — which was really useful given we had a large volume of customers, companies and orders to move.
Personalisation is a key strategy for driving sales at Tony's Chocolonely. So, a key milestone on the DTC side was the integration of the Wrapper Creator (built by Bitfactory), Tony's Chocolonely's signature personalisation tool which allows customers to create unique wrappers with custom font and colours, names or messages when purchasing a gift. "This is the most important product for our ecommerce business. Sharing your message while sharing our chocolate is a unique and core customer experience for Tony's," Chiel emphasises.
Thanks to Shopify's extensibility, Elia Chiarucci, Web Developer at Ask Phill and his team integrated the Wrapper Creator using Shopify's API. What's more, the personalised wrappers are stored in Shopify's customer meta fields – meaning customers can always go back and see the previous wrappers they've made. Tony's Chocolonely can also use those thumbnails elsewhere, like the checkout or even follow up emails to further personalise the customer experience.
With the Wrapper Creator integrated, we can store the thumbnail in Shopify and we can show that on the product page, in the cart, in emails. With UI extensions, we can even add it to the checkout and customer account pages.
The Wrapper Creator was just one of the many technically-creative customisations Ask Phill built as they tailored the solution to Tony's Chocolonely's specific needs. Another standout was the "Pay by Invoice" feature developed by Elia and the team, which enables corporate partners placing large orders to pay at a later date. With the need to implement fraud checks and connect with Tony's Chocolonely's credit assurance solution, these requests were previously very time consuming. "We're a small team and we would easily get 30 pay on account requests a day in the Netherlands alone. It was too much to handle manually," Chiel explains.
By further customising Shopify by integrating third-party APIs, Tony's Chocolonely and Ask Phill automated these security and credit line checks, significantly streamlining the process for business customers and reducing the manual work required. What's more, the new solution feeds into a clear customer record that makes it simple to track orders while reducing the risks of duplicated or fraudulent requests.
"We also built the ChocoPortal – a new app portal which sits on the Shopify platform" Elia adds. The ChocoPortal provides an easy way for Tony's Chocolonely to manage their ladder pricing and apply volume discounts or flexible pricing, ensuring that B2B clients get a tailored price based on their segment and order size.
Results: A new template for growth
Since migrating to Shopify, Tony's Chocolonely has experienced significant improvements in platform performance, operational efficiency and scalability. Site speed is 2.5x faster, meaning a responsive and lag-free experience for customers. What's more, peak shopping moments are no longer cause for concern – the new site handles them without dropping a beat.
We've already seen several peak moments where hundreds of people are checking out. That used to crash our website but now it keeps on running smoothly. In turn, that means we're able to focus our time on doing bigger activations.
With the new site, each of Tony's Chocolonely's customer segments has tailored features relevant to their needs and buying preferences. Further, Tony's Chocolonely have the foundations of a scalable solution. They can quickly create and activate new markets, nurturing their growth and furthering their goal to take ethical chocolate global.
With Tony's Chocolonely planning further expansions across Europe and preparing for seasonal spikes, their new Shopify site acts as a foundation for launching new markets without needing to spend resources building from scratch.
In terms of international expansion, we are looking forward to opening up new markets eventually. We basically have our template now. There will always be local nuances, but Shopify makes it easy for us to adapt.
Today, just like their famous chocolate bar, Tony's Chocolonely has a store that proves things can be done differently – and better. With that solid Shopify foundation supporting them, they can remain focused on their urgent mission: ending exploitation in the chocolate industry.
So far, the feedback from our team has been great – it's a big improvement. From unifying our stores and improving how we run promotions and discounts, to highlighting products or showing off our personalisation proposition, it looks better, performs better and is simpler to use.