The Challenges
As a young brand, Rowing Blazers was going through the many common growing pains experienced by e-commerce retailers early on. The brand lacked a long-term vision and strategy for cross-border expansion (evidenced by its slow growth rate outside of the U.S.) but it recognized the value of a global presence.
Rowing Blazers soon discovered just how complicated cross-border e-commerce can get. The brand’s international traffic was growing - especially in places like the U.K., Netherlands, and Japan - but conversions were falling flat. Its e-commerce website lacked the market-specific localization capabilities required to serve non-domestic consumers.
What’s more, the brand was suffering material losses from international shipping. Rowing Blazers was shipping globally, but at an extremely high cost that was impacting its bottom line.
“Our products were being made in Portugal and other parts of Europe, and then they were shipped to New York, and then shipped again to our order fulfillment center in Hong Kong,” explained Alexis Wise, E-Commerce &Performance Marketing Manager at Rowing Blazers. “This was not an efficient way to move goods globally. The pandemic illuminated our supply chain gaps and shortcomings in our global customer experience.
“If we addressed these issues, we were confident our global penetration rate could reach 20-30% over the next few years,” Wise said. “But we couldn’t do it alone.”
The team reached out to Flow, confident that the brand would soon have a world of customers within reach.
Problem
- Sales growth was limited outside of the U.S. despite increased global traffic.
- International consumers suffered poor shopping experiences due to limited localization capabilities.
- Inefficient logistics led to unsustainably high costs for cross-border fulfillment.
Solution
- Frictionless, localized experiences for 20 global markets, including local currencies and payment methods.
- Streamlined international shipping and returns, unlocking superior unit economics.
- Shopping experiences optimized for conversion through deep-stack A/B testing.
The Flow customer service team is top notch, and is always there to assist with everything from technical updates to strategic planning.
– Alexis Wise, E-Commerce & Performance Marketing Manager at Rowing Blazers
The Solution
Serving as the backbone of Rowing Blazers’ global penetration strategy, Flow’s modular, cross-border solution enabled the team to eliminate several points of friction in short order.
Frictionless Shopping Experiences
Rowing Blazers now offers more than 20 localized e-commerce experiences through Flow, one for each market in which they do business. The brand also recognizes all major currencies, allowing for a seamless checkout experience in every global market.
“With Flow, we have been able to work more efficiently and scale efforts to localize experiences in a matter of weeks,” said Wise.
Trusted Payment Options
Rowing Blazers was able to boost international sales by enabling hundreds of new payment methods, such as Klarna and JCB wire transfers. In South Korea alone, Rowing Blazers can now accept 26 different payment options.
Further, the brand can now leverage dynamic, transparent pricing in the local currency of each market, so international e-commerce customers can quickly understand the total cost of their order and handle any relevant duties at the time of purchase.
Streamlined Logistics
Flow’s platform made it possible for Rowing Blazers to choose its own shipping carriers out of dozens of international providers. Given the brand’s prior struggles with global logistics, having this kind of flexibility was a game- changer.
Today, returns are painless and far more cost-effective. Plus, with Flow’s hubless shipping model, Rowing Blazers has the confidence and capability to ship everywhere in the world, quickly and affordably.
Superior A/B Testing
Another major win for Rowing Blazers was the ability to A/B elements across the entire cross-border shopping experience in each market, from price rounding and taxes and duties display, to new payment options and different shipping tiers.
“Previously, we weren’t able to optimize all areas of the customer journey that we needed to in order to create the best localized experiences,” said Wise. “Flow lets us customize every variable impacting our shoppers’ journey and test those variables to achieve the highest conversion.”
Simply Global
Today, Rowing Blazers is able to effectively capture the growing global demand for its products. The brand reports that 19% of its e-commerce revenue now comes from international customers; it saw a staggering 1000% increase in GMV YoY since partnering with Flow.
As the up-and-coming fashion retailer continues to carve out a space in the industry, the brand has confidence that Flow is the right solution to grow with. Flow’s commitment to innovation and improvement means Rowing Blazers has a long-term partner that will continue to invest in the success of its international business.
