Chair King Backyard Store Serves Up a Custom Shopping Experience with BigCommerce
Discover how customizable, cost-effective and reliable BigCommerce is and why we built it that way.
42%
increase in users
47%
increase in sessions
28%
increase in revenue
Performance metrics compare Q1-Q3 2023 over 2022
From a small business to a reigning retailer.
With a mission to “make it easy for everyone to spend more quality time in their backyard,” Chair King Backyard Store has undoubtedly made its mark. Founded in Houston in 1950, Chair King has since evolved into the largest outdoor furniture and accessories retailer in Texas.
Alongside its sister brand, Fortunoff Backyard Store, Chair King has left an unmistakable footprint across the U.S., and the company shows no signs of slowing. While still a family-owned business, Chair King has launched showrooms across Austin, Dallas, San Antonio, and Houston.
But while Chair King strives to provide the highest quality furniture at the best possible value, the Texas-based brand also strives to provide an unparalleled customer experience — both in-person and online.
CHALLENGE
Bogged down by an outdated ecommerce platform.
Beginning their ecommerce journey in 2016, Chair King originally built its online store using its ERP, Furniture Retailer Outdoor Group, and later migrated to another ecommerce platform. However, after facing issues with outdated technology, scalability, and poor user experience, the team eventually found that the platform was no longer meeting the business’s needs.
“Their technology wasn't really up to date, and the website itself was really slow and kind of clunky,” explained Kristen Brown, Director of Ecommerce at Chair King.
Ultimately, the business needed a more robust and flexible solution to support its growth initiatives and provide a better user experience for its customers. Additionally, Chair King desired a more user-friendly back-end to support its smaller ecommerce team.
“The most valuable aspect of the BigCommerce platform is its combination of robust features, scalability, and ease of customization. It has empowered us to adapt to changing market conditions and deliver an exceptional online shopping experience to our customers.”
kristen brown  Director of ecommerce, chair king
SOLUTION
Creating a customized checkout experience with BigCommerce.
In their search for an ecommerce platform, Chair King knew it needed a solution that could support the company’s unique business model and delivery process. As a large-scale furniture brand, Chair King offers white-glove delivery and more localized selling, which meant it needed a customizable checkout experience.
After evaluating a number of ecommerce platforms, including Shopify and WooCommerce, Chair King eventually landed on BigCommerce.
“What really made us pull the trigger on BigCommerce was the ability to customize,” said Brown.
With this customizability, Chair King was able to build a custom shipping calendar that appears at checkout, which allows customers to view available delivery dates. This way, customers can either select their preferred delivery date from the calendar or select in-store pickup at the Chair King warehouse in Houston.
Robust features to level up the customer experience.
“The most valuable aspect of the BigCommerce platform is its combination of robust features, scalability, and ease of customization,” said Brown. “It has empowered us to adapt to changing market conditions and deliver an exceptional online shopping experience to our customers.”
With flexible product catalog management, robust SEO capabilities, responsive web design, and ease of third-party tool integration, Chair King has found the features and functionality to enhance its user experience.
“Overall, BigCommerce is a better user experience for our customers, and it's also a better user experience for the team that's supporting it,” said Brown. “It's definitely pushed us forward even within our space. I think we have one of the more updated websites for the niche market that we're in.”
In addition to native features and functionality, Chair King has also leveraged a number of apps and integrations to level up its ecommerce site. The team uses PapaThemes to create the overall website look and feel, HubSpot for its CRM, and Limespot to drive engagement and conversion to the site’s product listing and product detail pages.
Most notably, Chair King uses Shogun as its content management system (CSM), which enables the team to manage all of its content on the homepage and secondary landing pages.
“It's easier to manage the content that way and time the content out, because we do a lot of different promotional activities,” explained Brown. “It allows us to have an easier time doing all of that."
Finding a trusted partner in BigCommerce.
Ultimately, a successful ecommerce launch isn’t just about having the right tools and technologies — it’s also about having the right support along the way.
Working with a BigCommerce Implementation Project Manager and Customer Success Manager, Chair King found a trusted partner to support its ecommerce migration and continued growth.
“Our dedicated Implementation Project Manager guided us through the implementation process and ensured a smooth launch,” said Brown. “Our Customer Success Manager addressed any post launch issues by getting them escalated and resolved quickly. She also has kept us up to date on what has been happening in the upcoming platform releases and roadmap.”
Highlighted applications:
ERP: Furniture Retailer Outdoor Group
CRM: HubSpot
CMS: Shogun
Payment provider: Authorize.NET
Personalization: LimeSpot
Customer insights: LiveChat
Product reviews: Judge.me
Site theme: PapaThemes
Analytics: Google Analytics 4
Search: Smartsearch
Customer Success Manager
Implementation Project Manager
“The back-end that my team works in has been much easier to work with. The way that we were able to integrate our ERP into BigCommerce has streamlined setting up products.”
Kristen brown director of ecommerce, chair king
“Overall, Bigcommerce is a better user experience for our customers, and it's also a better user experience for the team that's supporting it. It's definitely pushed us forward even within our space. I think we have one of the more updated websites for the niche market that we're in.”
kristen brown, DIRECTOR OF ecommerce, chair king
RESULTS
Small team, big results.
With a small ecommerce team and a unique business model, Chair King knew it needed an ecommerce solution that was not only easy to use, but also able to meet complex business requirements — and in the end, BigCommerce was the best of both worlds.
“The back-end that my team works in has been much easier to work with. The way that we were able to integrate our ERP into BigCommerce has streamlined setting up products,” explained Brown. “Running the day-to-day promotions and looking at performance and analytics has been a lot easier with BigCommerce.”
With a “strong reputation for reliability and scalability,” BigCommerce lived up to the hype, and the team is already seeing big results.
“We've seen a big increase in revenue and conversion rate — we've definitely seen significant improvements in our business,” said Brown.
Since making the switch to BigCommerce, Chair King has seen a 28% increase in revenue from Q1 to Q3 2023, a 47% increase in sessions, and a 42% increase in users over this same period.
“Running the day-to-day promotions and looking at performance and analytics has been a lot easier with BigCommerce.”
Kristen brown director of ecommerce, chair king
LOOKING AHEAD
Personalization is key.
As Chair King looks to the future, one thing is certain: ecommerce isn’t going anywhere.
When asked what’s next for the business, Brown explained that Chair King will continue to enhance the site, particularly through personalization.
“Things that we're focused on for 2024 are more personalization for the customer: personalized landing pages, personalized experiences, and trying to incorporate AI more when it comes to recommendations for the customers.”
In addition, the team is in the process of building B2B sites for both Chair King and Fortunoff Backyard Store, planning to launch in the beginning of 2024.
“Ecommerce is a central component to our overall business strategy,” said Brown. “We see it as a key driver of revenue growth and customer engagement and we plan to continue to invest in ecommerce to support our future growth.”
“Ecommerce is a central component to our overall business strategy. We see it as a key driver of revenue growth and customer engagement and we plan to continue to invest in ecommerce to support our future growth.”
Kristen brown director of ecommerce, chair king
Published: December 2023
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