Online revenue grew 104% during the first six week period, with mobile accounting for 60% of total online revenue.
Sisters Jeanie and Cindy have been profitably running SOL Lingerie for 18 years. They saw an opportunity to grow their business and rebrand the online experience. The goal for the new brand was to continue growing the business beyond the store by creating an online version of their fun, unique and personal in-store experience. Designing the new website was about giving customers what they wanted—a convenient and personal experience. The company needed a platform that could handle the demands of a very stylized site design, seamlessly scale to support their projected growth, and provide the added functionality their vision will require over time.

SOL partnered with Magento 2 Trained Solution Partner Guidance to bring their vision to life. SOL was using Magento Community Edition, but wanted a more sophisticated platform that could scale to support future growth of their online business, and allow significant levels of personalization and social media integration to help deliver their unique online experience. When Guidance recommended upgrading to Magento Enterprise Edition 2.0, the team was all in.

“We quickly realized that growing the business meant growing the online business. Magento opens up the possibility of using technology to provide customers with the same fun SOL experience online as they get instore. The value of the online customer experience is what it’s all about. That’s what will drive our growth,” says Jeanie Peterson, Co-Founder of SOL.

The architecture, performance and scalability of Magento 2.0 allowed SOL to hit the ground running, handle the increased traffic and number of SKUs, and positioned them to be more significant eCommerce player in their industry. By leveraging the out-of-box responsive design theme, they improved conversions on mobile devices as well as Google search rankings. In fact, mobile and tablet devices accounted for 48% of all site traffic in November and December 2015, and 27% of all eCommerce conversions.

The company was able to take advantage of the extensive ecosystem of solutions available for Magento 2.0 to deliver exactly the experiences their customers want. Everything from integration with their POS system, to appointment scheduling and visual order history was available through partner-developed extensions. They leveraged the native Magento CMS capabilities to manage rich content that would normally be in a non-eCommerce platform like Drupal for their Designer Landing Pages, The SOL Story, and Meet the Fitters Biographies. This, plus the new Admin UX, made it easier for them to manage all their content, as well as customer and order information, which is a big advantage for a company of 25 employees.

The completely redesigned site went live on October 14, 2015—taking only 90 days from start to finish. Online revenue, including mobile, grew approximately 104% during the first six week period, with mobile devices representing 60% of the total online revenue (more than double the industry average of about 27%). SOL has never experienced this type of rapid sales growth in its 18-year history. With the help of Guidance Solutions, Inc., SOL expects to gain significant cost efficiencies and productivity enhancements with upcoming Magento 2.x releases based on their early experience and learnings with Magento Enterprise Edition 2.0.