OpenStore’s New Product Playbook for its 45+ Shopify Brands

Victoria Frank, Business Operations

Jun 11, 2024

At OpenStore, many of our nearly 50 brands have especially popular products, and shoppers will sometimes tell us they want their favorite products in more sizes, colors, or variations. This was the case with Jack Archer customers, who frequently requested that the popular menswear brand release shorts. 

In this latest installment of our Opening Up series, we’ll share how we developed a new product—the Jetsetter shorts—for Jack Archer.

In the nine months after we acquired Jack Archer in 2022, we scaled the brand’s revenue from $1M to $10M. This growth has allowed us to reinvest earnings into new products for our brands. 

The idea for the Jetsetter shorts originated from the huge popularity of the Jack Archer Jetsetter pants. Customers regularly told us they loved the comfortable fit of the Jetsetter pants, and wished we made a pair of shorts with the same fit. With that in mind, we got to work to launch the shorts by the spring of 2024, so customers could enjoy them all summer.

We knew producing the shorts wouldn’t be complicated, since we’d largely base the shorts on the Jetsetter pants. The biggest hurdle was determining the inseam of the shorts, since people have specific inseam preferences. So we surveyed customers and settled on a seven-inch inseam for the launch.

To decide which colorways we should offer, we evaluated the most popular colors of the Jetsetter pants. We also ran a test on Meta, directing users to a sign-up form for the shorts. We used the results of that research to decide on three colors for launch: Stone, Space Black, and Charcoal Gray.

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Before formally rolling out the Jetsetter shorts, we ran a teaser campaign via e-mail, SMS, and organic social to build excitement for “something new.” We created a landing page where Jack Archer customers could provide their phone numbers to get SMS updates about the shorts. This SMS campaign proved the most successful Jack Archer SMS campaign ever. 

We sent five emails to Jack Archer subscribers over nine days. The email campaign generated more than $28K in revenue, making it Jack Archer’s highest-performing new product email campaign and Jack Archer’s highest-performing non-discount email campaign ever. The pre-launch emails delivered a 48% lift in click-through rate, compared to Jack Archer’s 2024 average. The launch email delivered a 53% lift versus the average. 

In the first three days, we sold more than 1,000 pairs of shorts to returning Jack Archer customers. Only one week after our soft launch, we reached a 19% sell-thru rate on our inventory. About three weeks after the soft launch, we achieved a 35% sell-thru rate. About 80% of the sales came from existing customers making a repeat purchase. The launch also increased the LTV (lifetime value) of our customer base. 

The Jetsetter shorts have become Jack Archer’s second-most popular product offered. Sales of the shorts have made up 13% of Jack Archer’s sales since they were launched. 

Following the success of this initial launch, we’ve started working on rolling out another colorway for the Jetsetter shorts. We also plan on launching seasonal colorways of the Jetsetter pants and shorts in the coming months.

The Jetsetter shorts are just one of many new products we’ve released for our brands. For example, earlier this year, we released a new drone, the Blackhawk Pro 3, for our brand EXO Drones. Our approach to new product development varies depending on the brand and its relationship with OpenStore. 

For OpenStore Drive brands, we’ll typically look at the founder’s existing plans for new products and use that to strategize what we’ll launch during the six months we’re operating the brand. 

For brands like Jack Archer that we’ve acquired, we’ve created a system that helps us filter through our different product ideas and prioritize them based on certain success metrics. 

Our process for creating new products for our brands continues to evolve and improve. This year, we’re expanding into new channels such as organic social and partnerships for new product launches. 

When you sell your business to OpenStore, you can be sure that our expert team will not only maintain your brand’s integrity but also invest in your business’ growth through new product development.