Imagine for a moment that you’ve just graduated from college. You decide to sell custom t-shirts online, just to see what happens.
Now fast forward about 15 years, and think about what it would be like to have watched that “on a whim” endeavor grow into a thriving, growing e-commerce business.
You’ve just pictured the story behind Crazy Dog T-Shirts’ incredible success. After starting with a few family members in a 600 square-foot space, the company now employs 50 staff members in a facility 60 times that size.
Eager to learn more? Here’s a quick look at how it all went down…
Wait…you said crazy who?
Even if you’re not familiar with Crazy Dog T-Shirts by name, you’ve no doubt seen their laugh-inducing products.
That mug your coworker carried to the conference room — the one that says he just survived another meeting that could’ve been an email? That came from Crazy Dog. So did the t-shirt that appeared on your Instagram feed proclaiming a friend is silently correcting your grammar, and the one that confidently states: That’s a horrible idea. What time?
Crazy Dog creations are funny, nerdy, geeky…and wildly popular.
The most surprising part? After 16 years in operation, the team still comes up with new designs every week.
No wonder consumer demand is sky-high. The bigger question is:
How does Crazy Dog T-Shirts keep up?
Turns out, the answer lies in e-commerce technology.
And they keep up with demand how?
Well, it’s no secret that this was a difficult challenge to overcome. As brand recognition grew, it became increasingly difficult for Crazy Dog T-Shirts to stay ahead.
“We had a strong presence on eBay and Amazon,” Digital Marketing Manager Tony Kingston said in a recent interview with Rithum. “But the market was moving to lots of marketplaces, and we couldn’t keep track of them.”
With more than a hundred marketplaces to choose from, just deciding which ones would be best for the brand was a big challenge — not to mention getting up and running on each one.
“The solution we were originally using was no real solution,” said Kingston. “We have to constantly be on top of things. We found that if we made 100 listings and did nothing with them, they wouldn’t generate any revenue for us. We have to always research search terms, revamp listings and stay on the cutting edge of the e-commerce marketplace.”
So Kingston and his colleagues considered a few different options and talked to a handful of providers.
That’s when the company discovered Rithum.
What’s happening now?
Eight years after the first Crazy Dog T-Shirt was sold, the company started leveraging Rithum’s e-commerce platform. The results were a game-changer.
“To manage thousands of SKUs on 20 different platforms is impossible,” Kingston explained. “Rithum allows us to use one SKU. [We] make one change on one product and have it affect all 20 marketplaces at once, which is phenomenal.”
Most recently, the company has been experiencing double-digit growth for eight consecutive months.
There’s more to the story, of course, and you can read it all in more detail on our success story page.
Looking for strategies your e-commerce company can use to achieve similar growth? We have plenty! Be sure to subscribe to our monthly newsletter for trends, tips and best practices from the e-commerce experts at Rithum.
