How ADD 9 Engineered their Rapid Growth in Just 2 Years with OpenCart
Our new success story comes from Sweden. We did an interview with ADD 9, a business that’s making an impact on the alternative fashion industry. They managed to achieve very significant growth shortly after they made a switch and launched their OpenCart store.
Let’s dive right into it...
Introduce your business with a few words
ADD 9 is a Swedish online store that sells alternative clothing and accessories. We started our journey in June 2009 with a small physical store in Sweden. After just 6 months we started our online store and since a few years back we are 100% online. Our main focus is to offer our customers quality products and the best possible customer service.
Tell us about your website and the tools you are using
When we first started our online store, we used a platform with small design opportunities and a monthly subscription. In 2015, we were ready for a change and started using OpenCart. We just loved the flexibility and all the cost effective ways to get the right look and all the latest functions.
After a year with OpenCart we decided to take a step further and changed the look of the store and bought lots of new modules. We bought a new theme, a new checkout, changed the sort order of our products, an email reminder to the customers that abandoned their carts, a new integrated blog, a better newsletter module, a lookbook gallery and lots of smaller design changes.
We were so happy to build a store that had everything we wanted for a very low cost.
What has been your growth for the past few years?
We are growing every year and since 2010 we have increased our sales with 30-50% a year. As an example, our turnover will be twice as high 2016 compared to 2014. After we started using OpenCart the sales increased and our costs are now much lower than before.
How do you promote your products online?
We have tried lots of different ways to promote our products. Now we use three ways that are very effective for us. We buy sponsored ads from Facebook, Instagram and Google AdWords. Lately, Instagram has been our most important channel promoting our products. On Instagram we work with inspiring pictures that make our products come alive and as an added bonus we can easily follow up which products our customers like.
What’s your advice for new entrepreneurs and future store owners?
Don’t just focus on the sales, you should be very careful with the costs as well. You should always be open for new ideas and products – find out what your customers want and change your assortment after them. Set measureable goals for your business and always follow up on them. You should have short term goals to always stay in focus and long term goals to build up your company and always move forward.
Conclusion
ADD 9 obviously weren’t feeling comfortable with their previous platform. And it seems that starting with OpenCart decreased their costs significantly and helped them generate much more sales than they previously did. With the help of extended functionalities such as a new checkout, cart abandonment recovery tools, and a new theme, they built a personalized store at a very low cost.
