This month’s success story comes from Wood Apparel, a recent addition to the Shopify family but a great one! This team of web developers and digital marketers decided to combine their online skills to sell something they all like, wooden watches and sunglasses and they’re doing very well. I got to spend a bit of time with Jarad Frimmel, Marketing Director of Wood Apparel, to pick his expert brains about what they really thought of setting up their own Shopify store. Even though they’ve done this many times over, seems things are different when it’s your own:
JH: How long have you had your Shopify store for Wood Apparel?
JF: Development on the store started in May 2016 with the final version being launched in about the beginning of June of the same year.
JH: What prompted you to start selling online and what made you choose Shopify?
JF: Working as web developers in a digital marketing agency, we wanted something that was our own, a side project that would let us use all of our combined skills and all the existing assets at our disposal. It was not difficult to get started since we had the experience, and Shopify was second nature. Having used it many times in the past for our clients we could quickly decide that this was the solution for us, based on a number of benefits it provided: multichannel shipping, secure checkout process, a great variety of high-quality themes to choose from and a quick starting solution. Shopify works out of the box the way you want it to and you don’t necessarily need to be an expert coder to know how to use it.
JH: How did you find the setup process?
JF: The setup process was super easy and straightforward. It took longer for us to decide on a name and to choose a template than it took to get the store set up. There was nothing that stood in our way, or anything that was difficult in setting up a Shopify store.
JH: Do you use uAfrica’s shipping and/or multichannel? What do you use it for?
JF: Yes! uAfrica’s shipping module is a godsend. It has helped us tremendously! It’s a massive time saver and very simple to use; not to mention very affordable as well! When it comes to logistics, we know plenty of stores that struggle with this, but to be honest, when an order comes through, and thanks to uAfrica shipping, we just log in, place the order and the courier is here in no time ready to deliver our products to our clients in about 1-2 days usually. For something that is normally a difficult aspect of eCommerce, it is now one of the things we worry about the least as we know it’s covered with uAfrica shipping.
JH: What do you find is the most convenient aspect of using uAfrica?
JF: It’s definitely the Shipping interface. The amount of time it saves us when starting out is great.
JH: Can you let us in on what’s in your business strategy over the next 12 months, for instance what areas are you focusing on?
JF: At the moment, we are expanding our efforts to become the biggest brand in our niche online. When someone searches for our products online, we want our listing to be shown first for Google AdWords, Google Shopping and even organically. We’re also expanding our reach into other online marketplaces, featuring on Takealot, bidorbuy, OneDayOnly and a few others.
We have plans to introduce product videos, something that many online stores aren’t particularly using at the moment, which should help differentiate us significantly from our competitors.
Later in the year, we also have plans to harness some retail space in the form of pop-up shops, retail stores and any other events where we can feature our products to our customers in person.
JH: Out of 10, how would you rate your experience using uAfrica.com and why?
JF: We can confidently give uAfrica.com a 10/10. When it comes to shipping, multichannel and any support we need, we know that these are covered with uAfrica.com.
Take a peep at their wooden wares online at Wood Apparel and discover your persona! These watches are rather snazzy!
