Free Fly Apparel grew out of one outdoor-loving family’s desire to find a comfortable performance shirt that didn’t feel like plastic. When they couldn’t find one, they created it based on bamboo – and then made their lightweight, moisture-wicking bamboo apparel available to outdoor enthusiasts everywhere.
Free Fly Apparel customers are educated, higher-end and predominantly male. They demand a no-hassle, streamlined purchase experience.
Challenge
Migrate thousands of dollars worth of open gift cards to a new platform
Free Fly Apparel was planning a migration from Magento to Shopify Plus as they felt it would deliver better results for their business, but two things concerned them:
First was Shopify’s rudimentary gift card system. With Magento, Free Fly customers enjoyed the ability send personalized gift cards directly to their recipients. Free Fly staff had a high level of control over the gift card experience including flexibility of design, deep analytics, a management dashboard that empowered them to resend, reissue or cancel gift cards, and the ability to update the card holder on their current balance.
Shopify didn’t offer these capabilities.
Second, gift cards issued from Magento would become instantly invalid with the migration. Hundreds of open gift cards were still in circulation, with a combined value of over $9000. Free Fly Apparel management imagined cards bouncing, ruining customer experience and loyalty. In the best case scenario, hundreds of hours of customer support time would be spent locating the gift card and manually reissuing a new one. In the worst case scenario, an irate customer would write a scathing review of the store claiming they issued “fraudulent” gift cards.
The migration was already a stressful experience wrought with concern over downtime and potentially bad customer experiences. Free Fly wanted nothing more than a simple solution to the gift card issue.
Solution
Gift card migration and management system using Rise
Free Fly Apparel turned to Rise and its gift card management abilities.
Rise’s migration tool enables a store to migrate all of their outstanding gift cards from one platform to another, seamlessly replacing old gift cards with new valid ones. The customer communication emails are branded, so customers feel they have received an update from the store itself.
Free Fly Apparel depended on Rise to manage all their gift card abilities as well. Rise’s solution positioned them to use Shopify’s platform while enjoying a gift card experience befitting an enterprise level brand. Free Fly got the best of both worlds.
But with Rise, not only was there almost zero downtime for our site, our customers didn’t feel the migration at all.
Results
Retained revenue, time and reputation while gaining a superior gift card experience
The gift card migration was smooth, required almost zero staff involvement and customers found it easy and straightforward. Countless hours of customer support time were saved. The very real risk of loss of customer trust was entirely avoided. Instead, customers experienced a seamless transition of their existing gift cards and a superb Free Fly Apparel gifting experience.
With the site now post-migration, Rise provides Free Fly Apparel with complete control over their gift card management. Rise’s capabilities – with advanced functionalities including reissuing lost cards, detecting fraud, tracking usage and more – is giving the Free Fly Apparel team the gift card management platform they always dreamed of.
