13k

Blue Bottle Coffee used Spree to turn one coffee shop into a $700 million e-commerce business

Third wave coffee

SPREE SUCCESS STORY

Blue Bottle Coffee was founded in 2002 by James Freeman, a freelance clarinetist and coffee enthusiast, who began roasting beans in his garage. Since then the company has grown from a favorite local shop in the Bay Area into a global brand with strong online presence.

Considered to be one of the major players in third wave of coffee, a movement aimed at uplifting coffee from mere commodity to a luxury good like wine or craft beer, Blue Bottle played a big part in making high-end and artisanal coffee as popular as it is today. With their in-depth barista training program, brewing guides, and videos, they became one of the most impassioned craft coffee evangelists.

By educating their customers about the craft of brewing a good cup of coffee and finding ways to build stability into what is essentially a retail marketplace, they’ve created a brand that people want to talk about. Blue Bottle Coffee has translated their chic coffee shop ideas into a wildly successful online brand.

Reinforcing relationships through the purchase experience

Blue Bottle’s online presence is inline with its in-store experience, making it possible for the company to encourage consumer passion in their products. When a customer purchases coffee through their website, Blue Bottle makes it an educational experience as well. The product pages and purchase flow act to reinforce the company’s ideas on freshness and correct brewing methods. This helps guide the customer toward making a purchase that provides the best overall experience at all times.

Blue Bottle’s minimalist design is instantly recognizable, and they reinforce it via social media. In a world where Instagram shots of your morning cup raise the awareness of a brand, Blue Bottle built their design aesthetic to be high-status but also inviting. When a customer snaps a picture in a Blue Bottle cafe, they’re boosting their status to their followers, which translates to how the brand is perceived on social media.

Blue Bottle Coffee Spree Commerce Success Story

Blue Bottle Coffee and Spree

When Blue Bottle Coffee Co. hired David Bowman as its chief financial officer in 2012, its online sales had swollen to about $1 million online. But the e-commerce software it was using, didn’t offer features the company felt it needed to grow its business online.

The retailer wanted, for instance, to let shoppers buying subscriptions—monthly coffee bean deliveries—the flexibility to pause, cancel or restart their deliveries. The old system couldn’t offer that type of functionality.

After evaluating several options, Blue Bottle found Spree Commerce, an open-source platform, fit its needs.

Out of the box, Spree Commerce offers a host of free order management and product management tools. It also incorporates responsive design principles so that Blue Bottle can maintain a single set of web site content that adapts the display depending on whether the consumer is using a computer, tablet or smartphone. Spree Commerce also offers, integrations with several tools that link together a retailer’s systems—fulfillment, accounting, marketing tools—to provide a single location to view all the information in those systems.

“We wanted flexibility and we wanted openness to link our systems together,” Bowman says. Spree Commerce offered both. “Our systems gather a lot of data and that data tells a story,” he says. “But if you can’t bring that data together, you won’t understand that story.”

Tech Stack:

Integrations:

Conclusions:

SPREE SUCCESS STORY

Blue Bottle has developed a cult following for their beautiful cafes and exquisite coffee. But their website didn’t represent the brand well, and web sales made up only 10% of their revenue. After evaluating several options, they decided to go with Spree Commerce open source solution that together with introducing a coffee subscription service gave them a way to scale their business more effectively and translate their chic coffee shop ideas into a wildly successful online brand.

3form B2B product sample ordering enabled with a Spree Commerce cart and checkout with an ERP integration

3form website was a B2B product catalog with a contact form. Then 3form decided to use Spree to embedded a cart and checkout experience to streamline product sample ordering. Spree Commerce was integrated with an ERP to sync the product catalog and allow all 3form customers to use their existing user accounts. The project was delivered within 12 weeks by team augmentation of the 3form in-house dev team.

Read story

Name of Love uses Spree for its website that allows brides and bridesmaids to create and participate in online showrooms

Name of Love is an online retailer specializing in dresses for weddings and special occasions. It aims to create a more curated experience for fashion-forward bridesmaids who don’t want to spend a ton. And they do it extremely well with a beautiful website built with Spree Commerce that allows brides and bridesmaids to create and participate in online showrooms.

Read story

Gasido uses Spree for its online B2B marketplace for industrial gases

Gas providers can list their offers at the website and Gasido takes over the marketing and makes the offers of the offerers on the Internet findable. Customers can find offers that are relevant to them through different filters and can process the purchase simply and quickly. The suppliers receive the orders via the Gasido B2B marketplace and take over the delivery or the transfer process.

Read story

DieHard – America’s most innovative automotive battery brand uses Spree Commerce for its online store

DieHard’s website is built with Spree Commerce, a flexible and scalable open-source e-commerce software. Spree enables you to build beautiful online stores that are fast loading, user friendly and what’s most important – you have total control over them. On diehard.com you will find some really cool features like a sticky photo gallery on the product page, DieHard battery selector that helps determine which battery will best fit your car as well as a “Find locally” option that enables you to find the specific item in the local hardware store.

Read story

Spree Commerce powers Violet Grey’s Hollywood-chic marketplace with a highly curated selection of beauty products

Violet Grey is known as the go-to source for everything beauty. The brand’s Hollywood-chic ecommerce platform combines perusing through a magazine and online shopping with an amazing user experience. The company’s online marketplace, built with Spree Commerce, offers a highly curated selection of the best luxury beauty products including makeup, skin care, hair care and nails. 

Read story

Packhelp uses Spree for its B2B web-to-print Ecommerce platform

Packhelp chose Spree for its web-to-print Ecommerce platform because they new that in order to build a successful startup they shouldn’t try to reinvent the wheel but use the existing technology and go to market as fast as possible. It turned out very well even though their business is far from a simple online store as it features a 3d package customizing tool.

Read story

Farmdrop launches a peer to peer grocery marketplace with Spree Commerce

Ben Pugh founded Farmdrop in 2014 when he spotted an opportunity to simplify the food supply chain using technology. The company, which provides a peer to peer grocery marketplace uses Spree as the E-commerce solution to connect farmers, growers and producers directly with local customers. By cutting out the middleman, Farmdrop pays producers 75 per cent of the final retail price.

Read story

Maisonette has revolutionized the children’s wear industry by creating a one-stop shopping solution for busy parents

Maisonette aims to be an authority in the children’s market as a shopping destination and an editorial destination with interviews and photo shoots. It is also a stylish solution to one-stop-shopping that stocks hundreds of brands, from cult and international houses to little-known labels. Maisonette uses Spree Commerce for its children’s wear multi-vendor marketplace that integrates with inventory management systems of over 170 vendors. 

Read story

FCP Euro experienced 50% traffic growth after migrating to Spree

FCP Euro chose Spree when they needed to take their online store to the next level. They were looking for a flexible solution that would enable customization and further integrations. Their choice proved to be a good one since in the first year after redesigning their website they experienced a 50% traffic growth and managed to convert to 95% online sales.

Read story

Swiss performance shoes brand On Running uses Spree for its DTC online store

On delivers industry-disrupting innovation in premium footwear, apparel, and accessories for high-performance running, outdoor, and all-day activities. For this purpose, it also needs an exquisite online presence and eCommerce performance. On Running chose Spree Commerce as the solution behind its DTC online store that offers premium products as well as premium user experience. 

Read story

ChefSteps uses Spree Commerce for its content-rich ecommerce platform dedicated to smart cooking

ChefSteps is a smart kitchen product company building tools to help people cook more, have more fun cooking, and get incredible results, every time. ChefSteps’s website is not only beautifully designed and rich in content but also boasts some amazing features like a digital scaling tool or egg cooking calculator. It was built with Spree Commerce, a fully-featured and market-proven open-source ecommerce platform that allows for complex customizations.

Read story

Blue Bottle Coffee used Spree to turn one coffee shop into a $700 million e-commerce business

Blue Bottle has developed a cult following for their beautiful cafes and exquisite coffee. But their website didn’t represent the brand well, and web sales made up only 10% of their revenue. After evaluating several options, they decided to go with Spree Commerce open source solution that together with introducing a coffee subscription service gave them a way to scale their business more effectively and translate their chic coffee shop ideas into a wildly successful online brand.

Read story

Urban Ladder chose Spree to introduce world class tech innovations that massively simplify furniture shopping

Urban Ladder is a design-led, omnichannel brand that offers furniture and home decor. With over 5000 designs across 35 categories such as living, dining, bedroom, study, etc. After securing $77 million funding, a decision was made to invest heavily in technology, as it was believed to be a key driver in Urban Ladder’s growth. Spree proved to be the right choice thanks to its flexibility, scalability, and reliability.

Read story

Alabama Chanin – an artisan and sustainable fashion brand uses open source e-commerce solution

Alabama Chanin is a lifestyle brand of well-designed and thoughtfully made goods for the person and the home. It celebrates and preserves unique traditions and crafting techniques, with a strong commitment to community through Made in the USA, local production. The company is rooted in the tenets of the Slow Design movement: good, clean, fair—which encourages designers, artists, and consumers to create and utilize thoughtful products in a socially and environmentally responsible way.

Read story

Everlane builds an honest $100M+ fashion manufacturing business with Spree powered eCommerce platform

Everlane re-defines the fashion supply chain, sharing the true costs and factory details behind their products. The brand is engaging and memorable. It stands out in the fashion industry thanks to its ethic and transparent attitude. Its online store reflects perfectly those qualities with the simple but elegant design and user friendly navigation. Spree Commerce with its flexibility and scalability proved to be a perfect match for yet another successful eCommerce startup!

Read story

Away uses Spree Commerce for its $1.4B smart luggage brand

Away is an e-commerce luggage startup founded by two former Warby Parker executives that aims to be the ultimate carry-on for travelers. The premium travel brand introduced its streamlined, tech-infused, carry-on luggage, selling directly to consumers to keep prices down. The vast majority (90%) of its sales takes place on Away’s sleek and user friendly website built with Spree Commerce, a flexible and scalable market proven e-commerce solution.

Read story

Hundred, a subscription service for personalized vitamin mixes powered by Spree Commerce raised $8M to expand to the US market

Hundred’s mission is to “shine a light and bring clarity to the murky vitamin space” by taking a holistic approach to analyzing your supplement requirements. From the unique subscription-based model, to the ongoing support from a Nutrition Expert to the affordable cost, the company is working to deliver customers the best possible user experience in as many ways as possible. This includes the brand’s beautiful and user friendly e-commerce platform, built with Spree Commerce.

Read story

Let's use Spree to build exactly what your business needs

facebook