Hommey is an Australian homewares and decor brand that began when founder Justin Kestelman was furnishing his own place and identified a gap in the market for high-quality home furnishings available at reasonable prices. With affordable luxury at the centre of the brand's ethos, Hommey entered the market in 2021 with their made-to-order cushions of all shapes, sizes and fabrics. Hommey has since expanded their offering to include bedding, towels, sleepwear and other handcrafted products for everyday living.
As Hommey's brand evolved and they looked to expand globally, it became clear they needed a platform that would allow them to tailor their website, content and product information at scale. While their headless commerce platform provided a design-led customer experience (CX), website changes required the input of costly developers. By upgrading to Shopify's Plus plan, the retailer now has the flexibility to test, innovate, iterate and move into new markets at speed.
Since upgrading to Shopify's Plus plan in 2022, Hommey has seen:
- 254% year-over-year (YoY) growth in revenue
- 75,000 new unique customers
- 70% less time spent on front-end and back-end development
The challenge: Barriers to brand evolution
Hommey could only sell their products online when they started trading during the pandemic and, to this day, it remains their primary sales channel. At the beginning, their goal was to convey a strong visual identity through their online channels, be it with their branding or the animations featured on their website.
Hommey's desire to create memorable and brand-oriented online experiences led to them implementing a custom storefront with Shopify in 2021. The headless architecture available in their Shopify plan gave Hommey a large amount of flexibility in how they designed their site. However, Hommey needed to implement complex customizations in order to realize the design vision for their store, which required the support of external developers to make the required front- and back-end amends.
From the get-go, Hommey's customers loved the brand and signature product, their handcrafted cushions. But Hommey decided they needed to diversify their product offering to ensure customers would return to purchase other home essentials beyond just cushions. As they introduced new product lines, Hommey needed greater support from developers to manage and update content across their online store. The money and time spent on website development, including managing conversations with developers and conducting quality assurance testing, became increasingly unsustainable as Hommey expanded their offering.
As well as being a digitally native and direct-to-consumer (DTC) brand, Hommey worked directly with boutique stores as part of their B2B strategy. The whole process was manual: from the initial contract signing, to processing order forms and inventory checks. The back-and-forth communication with potential partners was time-consuming and often resulted in missed opportunities when stock levels changed.
Hommey was on the lookout for a flexible solution that allowed their business to grow as they expanded their sales channels and moved into international markets. They wanted to be able to update website content, conduct split testing and customize their online channels in-house, without tapping into developer resources.
The solution: Customization capabilities remove innovation friction
Hommey partnered with Bedford Lane, a Shopify expert agency, in 2022 to transition from a headless architecture to leveraging existing themes available on Shopify's Plus plan, with the aim of improving CX, conversion rates, operational efficiency and scalability. This transition marked a pivotal moment in their journey toward becoming an aspirational global brand. Hommey could use themes with ample customization and make adjustments to the front-end of their store more efficiently, leading to a reduced reliance on external developers.
Using the customizable themes available in their Shopify Plus plan, Hommey can now rapidly test content, iterate and make changes in-house as they launch new product categories, such as robes and sleepwear. Moreover, Hommey is using Shopify Markets to tailor content to different audiences and test international strategies as they explore new markets, including the US and the UK.
With Shopify's Plus plan, Hommey can access tools on the App Store and seamlessly plug them into their platform to streamline processes. As an example, Back in Stock is a third-party app that gives Hommey insights into what products and colors are trending and how customers are searching for products. Hommey uses these insights to inform their future buying decisions, which reduces leakage from product unavailability. The high-intent customer data gathered from visits to out-of-stock pages can be used for remarketing purposes.
Partnering with Hommey to transition from a headless setup to Shopify's Plus plan has been pivotal in accelerating the brand's growth. By moving to Shopify's Online Store 2.0 theme architecture, Hommey has reclaimed around 70% of time previously spent on development and gained the ability to move faster without relying on routine dev support. With access to Shopify's full suite of tools and a broader app ecosystem, Hommey can now launch products, implement new features and respond to global demand with ease. The result is a lean, efficient operation that allows Hommey to scale, without compromising on customer experience or speed to market.
B2B on Shopify has helped Hommey to simplify their back-end wholesale processes, including connecting their inventory and product catalogs in real time. This has streamlined the B2B customer journey, as customers can see up-to-date stock levels and are provided with a seamless experience, similar to Hommey's DTC offering, instead of the previous manual process. Hommey also uses Shopify Flow to automate workflows, including the segmentation of customers, and Shopify Forms to ensure documents are being sent to the correct people during negotiations.
Thanks to B2B on Shopify, Hommey now only has to manually assess the suitability and brand alignment of businesses wanting to stock their products. Every other aspect of their interactions with potential partners is automated. This has led to huge time savings for Hommey that has resulted in them being able to scale their B2B operations.
After opening their first store in Melbourne in 2023, Hommey immediately saw the benefit of being able to aggregate customer, sales and inventory data across their online and in-store channels using Shopify POS. Hommey has now implemented the system across all their Australian stores and consolidated their sales channels into a single platform.
Ship from Store is a standout feature on Shopify POS that has transformed Hommey's inventory challenges into sales opportunities. When an item isn't available in-store, Hommey's associates can instantly locate stock at other locations, process the sale on the spot, and have the product shipped directly to the customer's home. This flexibility of inventory locations has increased product availability for Hommey's customers. The unified order management system on Shopify POS means that the buyer journey is seamless and consistent, no matter whether customers are shopping in-store or online.
The results: Driving agility for rapid growth
Thanks to Shopify, Hommey has achieved substantial growth in their revenue, international sales and business offering. Since upgrading, Hommey's website has reached 75,000 new unique customers and their revenue has grown by 254% year-over-year (YoY). Hommey has also experienced a significant boost in their international sales after using Shopify Markets, with 24,000 new unique international customers visiting their website.
Shopify has allowed Hommey to test and prove CX design concepts quickly and increase their speed to market, giving them a competitive advantage over other retailers. The advanced features available in Shopify's Plus plan means that testing website content, measuring engagement and iterating is now a frictionless and simple process that can be conducted in-house. Upgrading to Shopify Plus has led to time savings of around 70%, compared to when Hommey used a headless website and relied on external developers to make front- and back-end amends.
What's more, Shopify has given Hommey the flexibility to innovate and evolve their business model. They've introduced 11 new product ranges in the past year, and the ease of integrating different customer journeys using Shopify's Plus plan has enabled Hommey to cross-sell and upsell customers into other product categories. This has led to a 16% increase in average order value (AOV) since upgrading to Shopify's Plus plan.
The evolution of the Hommey brand couldn't have happened so quickly and seamlessly if it wasn't for Shopify. The platform has made introducing new products and entering new markets a frictionless experience. For us, Shopify is an innovation partner that helps us to simplify and consolidate our processes as we grow.
Looking forward, Hommey's aim is to have a larger national presence in Australia by rolling out more retail stores, as well as opening physical shops in the US. Shopify POS will continue to play an important role in consolidating Hommey's sales channels as they move into new markets. With the help of the expansion stores feature on Shopify's Plus plan, Hommey intends to build standalone online stores in other countries to increase their overall global presence and sales.