Global performance apparel brand

Delivered new revenue-generating product to market in just nine months

Brought personalized subscription box service to market in nine months, creating a new revenue stream

Challenge

To create a recurring revenue stream, engage new customers and enhance existing customer relationships, a F1000 performance apparel company had to launch a new personalized subscription box service fast.

Outcome

In just nine months, Surge – a Catalyte company engineers brought a new product to market. Within a year, the product experienced 10x growth and developed into a new revenue stream for the client.

A world-wide leader in sportswear had worked with Surge – a Catalyte company on various front- and back-end projects related to its ecommerce platform.

Given this close relationship, the retailer turned to Surge to help launch its first personalized subscription box service. The client needed a team familiar with its software development processes and one that could produce results on a compressed schedule.

Cleaning up the code

Prior to enlisting Surge, the personalized subscription box service wasn’t a top priority for the sports apparel company.

As a result, different teams and team members had developed a code base with little-to-no documentation. Before bringing the product to market, Surge needed to tackle this documentation issue to see what had already been done, what needed to be done and how to prepare future teams to continue evolving the product.

Due to its familiarity with the client’s processes, Surge was able to create comprehensive documentation of the project to date while developing and delivering new features. This helped improve the retailer’s documentation process with specific recommendations for future projects.

From 0-to-100, FAST!

From the time they started documentation, Surge engineers had six months to get the personalized subscription box service from its current prototype state to public launch.

This quick ramp was only possible given the strong working relationship and familiarity between the client and Surge.

Over those six months, Surge built a cloud-based product using microservice architecture to connect the consumer-facing portal of the subscription service with the backend that consisted of a logistics and inventory engine, input from personal outfitters (stylists who help select items) and a personalization engine that learns what a subscriber likes and refines suggestions over time.

New revenue stream

Starting a new subscription service could have been risky for the sports apparel company.

Instead, because of Surge’s work to launch the personalized subscription box service, and its continuous improvements over the first year, the product became a successful new revenue stream. Over the first year, the development team was able to keep up with the 10x growth of the service, providing thousands of subscribers with the footwear and performance apparel they desired.

Drove business value

Surge provided the client a new successful revenue stream.

Successful product scaling

The site was able to handle 10x growth over the first year.

Got to market fast

Engineers took a project that had been around for over two years and developed it for launch in just six months.