Crescent Moon Snowshoes Treks from Wholesale to Ecommerce Expansion with BigCommerce
Discover how customizable, cost-effective and reliable BigCommerce is and why we built it that way.
130%
increase in conversion rate
98%
increase in orders
180%
increase in revenue
Performance metrics compare February 2021 to January 2021.
The adventure starts with the best gear
Denver-based Crescent Moon Snowshoes sells high-quality snowshoes, hiking poles and outdoor gear for rugged adventurers of all ages. Tanner Dunn, Vice President of Crescent Moon Snowshoes, started running the business when his family’s business Dunn-Right Products acquired it in 2018.
Dunn-Right sells paddle boards, swimming pool accessories and basically anything and everything for summertime fun. With Crescent Moon and its product line of snow and hiking accessories, they could now cover winter seasonal sports as well.
Under the previous ownership, Crescent Moon was largely a wholesale business, selling to other retailers. Dunn estimates that 10% of the business was online. He saw an opportunity to expand the businesses reach, to acquire new customers and improve the margins of wholesale by going direct-to-consumer and building a better online store.
CHALLENGE
A new adventure calls for a new website
The previous owner of Crescent Moon had built a site on WooCommerce, which had worked when it was only a small fraction of the total business.
Because Dunn saw an opportunity to make ecommerce a much bigger focus, he started to look for other options. He needed something that could scale with the business’s growth plans. It also needed to be intuitive and easy to use, something Dunn found WooCommerce was lacking.
SOLUTION
BigCommerce is easy to build and easy to use
Crescent Moon worked with development agency oBundle to create the site they needed to take the website to the next level. oBundle collaborated with the Crescent Moon and digital marketing agency Backcountry Digital to make a beautiful, user-friendly website. One helpful feature of the website is a quiz that points people in the direction of the right shoe for them. This is especially educational for those new to the hobby.
The build process was seamless. “They were really good. We would just talk about what we wanted, and they would send us sandbox websites to play around in and provide our feedback. And we could not have been happier with how it turned out,” said Dunn.
In addition to the intuitive front-end experience for customers, Dunn also found BigCommerce to be very easy to use on the back end. “It only took a quick lesson to understand everything I need to do on BigCommerce. It’s super intuitive. Any data I want I can get within two minutes. Just looking at how far we’ve come from October 2019 to October 2020, you can compare anything. Looking at the data and what times and days people are looking and buying, the numbers are very helpful for planning.”
Small things like changing orders or issuing refunds are no longer pain points. “If a customer calls wanting to change or add to an order it’s super easy on BigCommerce. But on WooCommerce, it was a nightmare. That was a big thing.”
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Development Agency
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“It only took a quick lesson to understand everything I need to do on BigCommerce. It’s super intuitive. Any data I want I can get within two minutes.”
Vice President, Crescent Moon Snowshoes
“If a customer calls wanting to change or add to an order it’s super easy on BigCommerce. But on WooCommerce, it was a nightmare. That was a big thing.”
Tanner Dunn Vice President, Crescent Moon Snowshoes
“BigCommerce’s SEO capabilities are huge. The website growth we saw after switching and the increase in sales was just nuts,” says Dunn. “We did more sales in three months than we projected that we would have done in three years, based on last year’s numbers. Granted, some of that was due to COVID, but maybe half.”
Tanner Dunn Vice President, Crescent Moon Snowshoes
RESULTS
Realizing big ecommerce expansion
Seeing the potential for Crescent Moon, Dunn had big goals in mind for the ecommerce expansion. His hope was to take it from a 90/10 split for wholesale to ecommerce and transform it to a 50/50 even divide. It was a goal that was both met and exceeded. Here’s how:
“BigCommerce’s SEO capabilities are huge. The website growth we saw after switching and the increase in sales was just nuts,” says Dunn. “We did more sales in three months than we projected that we would have done in three years, based on last year’s numbers. Granted, some of that was due to COVID, but maybe half.”
Greater efficiencies in the website have also improved the speed at which the team can respond, even with the influx of orders. “I can go in and in 30 seconds see how many orders haven't shipped, how many orders are shipped and how many are awaiting fulfillment,” explains Dunn, “It's also super easy to put something in and out of stock in a second. Because again, last year there were days we'd have plenty of inventory, and then within 24 hours we're out.”
“I can go in and in 30 seconds see how many orders haven't shipped, how many orders are shipped and how many are awaiting fulfillment.”
Tanner Dunn Vice President, Crescent Moon Snowshoes
LOOKING AHEAD
Growing and expanding to reach more outdoor enthusiasts
Obviously a business with such expansive goals as Crescent Moon, isn’t going to rest on its laurels despite the big gains. “We're going to keep growing. The goal is to keep steadily growing online sales. That's probably number one,” says Dunn.
That may well include international expansion when the time is right. Crescent Moon currently sells across the U.S. and Canada, but could at some point take on Europe where snowshoeing is a popular pastime.
Crescent Moon will continue to invest in its ecommerce business with the support of BigCommerce scaling with the brand every step of the way.
Published: August 2021
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