BYLT – a high-growth premium apparel brand – faced performance challenges with its existing CMS, prompting a strategic shift over to Shopify’s headless framework, Hydrogen and a tech stack refresh.

Time was of the essence because the ecommerce team needed the project completed prior to their big Anniversary Sale in October, and the 2024 holiday season.

The results speak for themselves: Anniversary Sale revenue soared 35% year-over-year following the migration; proof that performance gains translate directly to growth.

As a bonus, the ecommerce team also reclaimed 25% of their time, streamlining day-to-day operations.

We sat down with Kyle Turadek, BYLT's Sr. Director, Growth and Ryan Groh, Associate Director, Ecommerce to get their perspective on why this big move was necessary.

Why BYLT Chose to Migrate to Hydrogen

In a nutshell, BYLT sought greater speed, scalability, and customization to support its rapid retail and catalog growth.

Hydrogen’s modern framework allowed BYLT to integrate more seamlessly with Shopify's tech ecosystem and take advantage of its innovation roadmap.

“We know this is where Shopify is going to be putting investments down the road. Just knowing that we're on that kind of cutting edge product, that was the main thing for us.

Modern professional athleisure is super competitive. Anything that you can do to get an upper hand is just a huge win in this industry.” – Kyle

Additional Benefits of the Hydrogen Migration

With Hydrogen in place, BYLT was able to add Pack's digital experience platform and Fueled's attribution suite to its tech stack.

Other positive results included:

• Immediate improvements in site performance and server-side rendering
• Handling more marketing/dev work internally vs. relying on third parties
• Support of complex product catalogs while maintaining consistent pricing and inventory data across all channels
• Improving the site's ability to handle international expansion via currency conversion and translation

“From an ecommerce standpoint it's really critical for us to be able to move at the pace that the company wants to.

Reduced friction across the web is super helpful for us, and being able to expand what we've been able to do previously to help other channels and internal departments is a world of difference for us.”  – Ryan

How Coldsmoke Made It Happen

Coldsmoke managed all the moving pieces of the 200+ hour project, coordinating between BYLT, Pack, and Fueled to make sure BYLT was positioned for success ahead of it critical Anniversary Sale.

Their hands-on approach and technical expertise ensured a seamless migration.

“Kudos to the Coldsmoke team on their communications, and a big shout out to the amount of support they give us for a client of our size.

We were able to hit a deadline that was really crucial, and they scored a big win for us on this one.” – Kyle

The Impact of Working with Pack

Using Pack's digital experience platform on top of Hydrogen has led to faster staging, significantly improved deployment speeds, new A/B testing capabilities, and the ability to respond to market changes quickly.

“What was really difficult with Friday afternoon launches, given time zones, is now something that we can do in a matter of seconds internally.

In terms of how much time is saved for the ecommerce team, I'd give it like, a day to two days a week. It's a very versatile tool, and I think it's the future of headless ecommerce." – Ryan

The Advantages of Working with Fueled

Fueled optimized BYLT’s data tracking and event targeting ahead of their Anniversary and BFCM sales, dramatically improving their customer insights and marketing performance.

With the ability to pass events from new customers, returning customers, and higher AOV customers, BYLT has more flexibility in targeting and ad spend.

“The number one thing is having the support of an A-1 player, which is what we get with Fueled. I feel like we have a tracking expert sitting in our office, which is pretty awesome.

Every single KPI that we can measure that's associated to tracking is up across the board. It makes me very confident that we have a best in class setup.” – Ryan

Positioned for Future Success

The successful migration to Shopify Hydrogen with Coldsmoke’s guidance and support from Pack and Fueled has led to significant short- and long-term benefits for BYLT.

“Being on that cutting edge and future proofing ourselves is really the theme here.

Being first to market in anything - products that we're testing with Meta, products that we're testing with paid channels, anything we're doing on the site - is just a huge win in this industry.” – Kyle

With Hydrogen and a stronger tech stack in place, the luxury athleisure brand has the ability to adapt quickly in a crowded apparel category, and their ecommerce team is extremely well-positioned to drive future growth and maintain a competitive edge.

Interested in working with Coldsmoke on a Hydrogen migration project?

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