Chapter 3 Andie Swim: Fixing a broken industry purchasing funnel for good

Why they won

Andie Swim won the Innovation Award for Product Innovation.

For creating a product experience that extends far beyond the product itself.

Business stats

• Founder: Melanie Travis
• Who submitted (and is quoted below): Melanie Travis
• Year founded: 2017
• Headquartered: New York, NY
• Ecommerce vertical: Direct to consumer (Apparel & Jewelry)
• Developer used: Jeremy Adam
• Website
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram

Business outcomes of the innovation

• 160% increase in traffic
• 2x increase in conversion rate
• Net Promoter score of 100

What they do

Andie is a modern, customer-centric solution to the broken process of swimwear shopping.

The challenge behind the innovation

The swimwear industry –– a $28 billion global market –– still exhibits low ecommerce penetration, despite the fact that women rank in-person swimwear shopping as one of the worst consumer experiences.

Ecommerce solutions often fall short as well, since fit is so important with swimwear but it’s impossible to tell how something will fit when scrolling through an endless grid of options.

And most retailers make women contend with onerous return policies when a swimsuit inevitably doesn’t fit.

How they make it work

At Andie, we developed an innovative try-before-you-buy model with a fun build-your-own box experience.

• Women build a kit on our website of their favorite pieces
• We send them to try in the comfort of their own home
• At the end of the try-on period, they send back anything they didn’t love with a pre-paid mailer included in their kit
• We charge them at the end of the process.

It’s like Warby Parker meets Stitch Fix, for swimwear.

From a technical perspective, we had two big challenges:

1. Saving the customer’s credit card so that we could charge them at the end of the try-on period (2 weeks after their initial order on our website)
2. Building an innovative build-your-own-box feature.

Thanks to BigCommerce and an integration with Rebillia, we were able to solve all problems and build a brand that solves swimwear shopping for women with a delightful ecommerce experience.

Final word

By offering a customer-centric home try-on approach thoughtfully designed for the modern shopper, we had a huge first season in business, which was Summer 2017.

• We have sold swimsuits to women in 49 states (just missing Alaska!).
• We have a Net Promoter Score of 100.
• Press have gone wild for the innovative Andie concept and we have been featured everywhere from the Wall Street Journal to the New York Times, InStyle, Glamour, The Zoe Report, and many many more.

Best of all, women love what we’ve built and are quickly becoming evangelists for the brand.