Boldking

The flexible shaving brand.

Boldking has carved a niche in the men’s grooming industry with its innovative approach to razors and skincare products. Famed for its subscription-based model, Boldking stands out in the European market for delivering custom-tailored shaving kits directly to consumers. Recognized for its dedication to quality, affordability, and sustainability, Boldking has cultivated a devoted following by prioritizing a seamless shaving experience. This commitment is mirrored in their strategic partnership with Ask Phill, emphasizing their aim to take the next step with their online shopping journey, grow retention, and optimize operational efficiencies by transitioning from a legacy custom-built platform to Shopify Plus. Collaborating with Analogue, Boldking introduced "The Flexible Shaving Brand," a strategy reflecting its dynamic approach through adaptable imagery and cutting-edge design. This redesign focused on improving the user interface and navigation, providing an engaging and intuitive online shopping experience on Boldking's website that aligns with Boldking's brand values and meets customer needs.

Boldking’s vision.

Boldking sought a comprehensive digital overhaul to decrease Total Cost of Ownership, technical overhead and better support its growth and enhance its global customer experience. The envisioned revamp targeted core aspects of its ecommerce operations:

• Migrating from a legacy custom build e-commerce platform to Shopify Plus.
• Replacing their custom build subscription software with Firmhouse.
• Robust Product Information Management (PIM): To streamline product data across multiple channels.
• Multilingual Support with Shopify markets: To cater to a diverse, global customer base.
• Optimized Checkout Process: To efficiently handle both subscriptions and one-time purchases, improving user experience and conversion rates.

Overcoming key challenges.

Before migrating to Shopify, Boldking encountered various challenges hindering its scalability and efficiency. These included complexities in managing its tech stack, platform content, innovation speed and efficient market expansion efforts. Additionally, Boldking wanted to integrate a PIM system and streamline its checkout process for enhanced user experience.

Boldking originally operated on a custom-built platform meticulously crafted under the guidance of one of the co-founders. This bespoke platform, perfectly tailored to specific business needs, provided a solid foundation for the company. However, as the company grew, the platform's specialized design revealed opportunities for enhancement and scalability.

The existing system’s limitations were highlighted by:

• Lack of flexibility: The bespoke nature of the platform meant that every change required substantial custom development, which was not only time-consuming but also costly.
• Knowledge bottlenecks: The dependency on the founding team for updates and changes created a single point of failure, complicating the process of knowledge transfer and reducing operational efficiency.
• Inability to scale: The custom system was not designed with scalability in mind, making it increasingly difficult to integrate new functionalities or expand to new markets without a complete overhaul.

The technical collaboration and integration process.

Our partnership with Boldking aimed to transcend these limitations by leveraging the dynamic capabilities of Shopify Plus. The collaboration, however, faced numerous challenges, particularly in terms of integration:

• The integration with Firmhouse Firmhouse brought exciting challenges—our team's quick thinking and flexibility turned unexpected issues into opportunities for growth and innovation. Managing the complex migration of over 150,000+  subscriptions to Firmhouse required outstanding planning to ensure data integrity and service continuity. This involved maintaining both the legacy and new systems in maintenance mode during the critical transition phase.

Innovative solutions and their impact.

Our collaboration with Boldking was marked by targeted solutions that directly addressed and resolved core challenges they faced. The technical know-how and creative problem-solving abilities of Ask Phill were instrumental in enhancing Boldking’s operational performance and customer experience. Here, we detail specific instances where our expertise significantly contributed to overcoming these challenges:

PIM translation challenges and metafield solution:

• Challenge: Integrating a PIM system that could operate across multiple languages without native support from Shopify.
• Solution: Leveraging our deep understanding of Shopify’s capabilities, we devised a metafield-based translation system. This innovative approach involved creating a bespoke framework within Shopify, where all translatable product-related data could be stored in metafields. This solution not only solved the immediate problem of multilingual support but also provided a scalable structure that could be easily updated and managed by Boldking’s team, ensuring that product information remained consistent and accurate across all markets. This metafield solution turned a complex challenge into a manageable and efficient process, enabling Boldking to launch their products in seven languages and maintain coherence across ten different markets.

Checkout extensibility and serverless functions:

• Challenge: Boldking needed a checkout process that could handle different types of purchases, including using iDeal for subscriptions, which Shopify doesn't support natively.
• Solution: We used our expertise in checkout customization and serverless functions to create a smooth integration. We built a custom checkout flow to bypass Shopify's limitations. By using serverless functions, we transferred cart information directly to Firmhouse’s checkout system. This allowed Boldking to keep offering iDeal for subscriptions and ensured the user experience met customer expectations. Our solution maintained a seamless customer journey from selection to payment while meeting technical requirements.

Remarkable results.

The collaborative efforts between Boldking and Ask Phill yielded remarkable results, setting new industry standards and driving business growth:

• Decreased the Total Cost of Ownership by more than 3x
• Improved the platform performance by 2.5x
• Expanded Market Reach: Boldking successfully operates in 11 active markets, catering to diverse audiences across 7 languages and 4 currencies.
• Optimized Product Management: With products seamlessly synced from Plytix PIM to Shopify and Firmhouse, Boldking streamlined its product data management processes.
• Enhanced Customer Engagement: Boldking attracted over hundreds of thousands of  customers, processed more than 150,000 orders, and migrated  their thousands of  active subscriptions, showcasing the success of its innovative strategies and enhanced user experience.

Setting new benchmarks in ecommerce.

Boldking's journey with Ask Phill shows how strategic collaboration and technical expertise can transform a business. By using Shopify's powerful features and creating custom solutions, Boldking overcame its challenges, expanded its market reach, and optimized operations. At Ask Phill, we aim to set new standards and build the future of ecommerce, and partners like Boldking make it all possible.