When the pandemic hit, revenues dropped in many retail sectors, but one area saw soaring profits: the home fitness and workout industry. According to NPD retail data, health and fitness equipment revenues more than doubled to $2.3 billion between March and October 2020. Stationary bike sales tripled and treadmill sales increased 135%.
Fitness app downloads also accelerated at a rapid pace as consumers pivoted from gyms to homes for their workouts and classes. January to November 2020 saw a 47% jump in downloads — about 2.5 billion global downloads of health and fitness apps.
One company that’s seen tremendous growth since its 2011 launch is Crossrope. It started with a goal to elevate home fitness and infuse it with more fun with a reinvented jump rope and workout app. Its products included weighted ropes with durable braided steel construction, high performance handles, and a patented fast clip system.
The company wanted to support anyone in pursuit of their own fitness goals — on their own terms. But the team felt its current ecommerce approach wasn’t working as well as they’d hoped.
Unexpected Challenges? No Sweat.
The Crossrope team worried about the possibility of BigCommerce limiting its team’s long term goals. The company was struggling to find good developers on BigCommerce and leadership felt the BigCommerce checkout experience left much to be desired.
In early 2020, after much research and thought, the team decided to transition to Shopify. They felt this platform offered a better UX and more room for growth. But then the COVID-19 pandemic hit — just as Crossrope and Netalico had begun working on the replatform and custom front-end development process.
On one hand, the immediate global shutdown created unexpected challenges as everyone needed to work from home. But Crossrope saw a silver lining amidst the turmoil — the company, like others in the fitness space, began to see a huge increase in demand for alternative at-home fitness solutions. People couldn’t continue their workouts at closed gyms, so they began searching for other options.
Off to the Races
At Netalico, we realized we’d need to quickly develop and implement a solution that would support Crossrope’s explosive sales growth. Originally, we’d planned to recreate their existing site on Shopify but after our performance audit, we determined the best solution included building a new website. Why? Because we could ensure it prioritized customer experiences and offered an optimized backend performance.
Because Crossrope’s customers live in the US, Canada, and Europe, we developed a custom solution designed to improve and support product geotargeting. With this approach, customers only see the products available in their location. The geotargeting also ensures the prices reflected are accurate, too.
Netalico and Crossrope agreed the company would benefit best by integrating Global-e’s platform into Crossrope’s Shopify webstore. Now the company provides a seamless localized shopping experience to customers in 200 locations across the globe. The platform supports more than 25 languages and sets prices according to local currency—over 100+ currencies.
Post-Launch Results
Crossrope launched its new Shopify Plus website and platform on May 6, 2020. Immediately, the company saw a:
90%
revenue increase
94%
growth in transactions
24%
conversion rate increase
57%
growth in traffic
