In January 2016, colleagues Simon Leonard, Andy Shaw, Bethanie Sleigh, and George Lagonikas left their jobs to construct one thing collectively. They labored throughout the Netherlands and the UK, and launched grüum in September 2016 with round 10 merchandise.
Whereas initially targeted on male skincare and shaving, the vary has expanded effectively past that. grüum now makes skincare, haircare, bodycare, and shaving merchandise for all ages and genders, all manufactured in-house in Stockport. Their bestselling product is a shampoo bar, which has offered hundreds of thousands.
Sustainability sits on the middle of the whole lot they make: cardboard packaging wherever attainable, waterless formulations, pure components. Their beauty scientists, employed in-house so that they wouldn’t should depend on contract producers, develop each formulation internally, which implies sooner iteration and tighter high quality management.
By 2023, they had been processing as much as 80,000 orders a month with one full-time developer. That’s after they determined to verify whether or not WooCommerce was nonetheless the precise platform for the place they had been going. After 4 months, they selected to stay on the platform. Right here’s what they realized.
grüum processes as much as 80,000 orders month-to-month throughout roughly 300 SKUs. Clients can buy single merchandise, subscribe to common deliveries, or purchase bundles, a few of that are configured in distinctive methods.
“We’ve numerous unusual methods we set merchandise up,” says co-founder Bethanie Sleigh. Their product bundles handle “the contents, the pricing, and inventory administration” as a single configurable unit.
For instance, a buyer can buy a bundled cleaning soap set, and add different merchandise onto their order. They’ll even subscribe to merchandise individually to avoid wasting much more.
They discovered that Shopify Plus couldn’t assist this.
“We had been going to have to alter our enterprise to suit into that enterprise,” says Leonard. “With WooCommerce, we are able to make WooCommerce match round our enterprise and make it work for us. We don’t have to alter our rules.”
This flexibility is because of WooCommerce’s open-source basis. grüum is just not restricted by the platform’s default options. If a bundle requires conditional logic, an extension is offered, or a developer can create one. Whereas most retailers could not want this, for companies with distinctive catalog constructions, it means they will promote with out restructuring their operations.
Magento was the primary to be eradicated.
Adobe Commerce — what Magento grew to become after Adobe acquired it — is constructed for enterprise operations with the depth of customization to match. It additionally requires appreciable operational sources. Though it was strong, it wasn’t the precise match. It’d require devoted technical workers for upkeep and efficiency, and, for grüum, the overhead was not economically viable.
And as Leonard places it: “We weren’t going to make use of a crew of 20 individuals operating our web site.”
Shopify Plus offered a distinct price problem. Subscriptions are important for grüum, now accounting for 10% of income, with the common subscriber staying 30 months. At this retention fee, subscription infrastructure prices are important.
Shopify expenses a proportion of subscription income. Leonard did the mathematics: “Whenever you’re doing £1 million or £10 million via subscriptions, that quickly provides up. You’re immediately shelling out £100,000 a 12 months.”
WooCommerce Subscriptions expenses a flat charge, leading to appreciable price financial savings at grüum’s scale. Funds adopted the identical logic. Leonard chosen WooPayments as a result of it’ i’s native to WooCommerce.
Pace can be an element. In response to Leonard, grüum’s CTO estimated that duties which beforehand took a 12 months might be accomplished in a month with WooCommerce. Sooner time to market reduces bills and complexity.
grüum operates its web site with one full-time developer and a part-time QA tester. A small content material crew manages product setup, web page creation, and day by day content material updates.
“We don’t typically want growth help,” says Sleigh.
The content material crew makes use of Gutenberg for web page constructing, for navigation, and Yoast for website positioning. Product listings, promotions, and seasonal updates will be managed with out developer involvement.
That is attainable due to WooCommerce’s design. The WordPress ecosystem delivers mature instruments like these for non-technical customers. grüum makes use of these instruments as supposed, slightly than counting on workarounds. And the developer focuses on constructing enhancements and enhancing the shopper expertise, slightly than routine upkeep.
If grüum ever left WooCommerce — Leonard notes, “I don’t assume we are going to,” — “The information is ours, which is kind of completely different from different subscription platforms. It offers us management over our clients slightly than giving them to a 3rd occasion.”
With a mean subscriber tenure of 30 months, grüum has developed robust buyer relationships. Their buy histories, preferences, and shopping for patterns stick with grüum. Relying on a system managed by one other occasion, particularly one which restricts information entry, creates a notable operational threat.
And never one which grüum is taking.
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Christina Bevitori is a content material strategist with 15 years of expertise serving to manufacturers join with their audiences. She at present works at Woo, specializing in editorial storytelling, website positioning, AEO, and AI-assisted content material creation. Exterior of labor, she enjoys enjoyable along with her cat, Snacks, kayaking, and gathering rock information.
