Over the past three years, Wisdom Supply Co. worked with a number of freelance developers. The team found they consistently struggled to effectively communicate their creative vision in a way that would even remotely translate to what they had envisioned.
As a bootstrapped startup, they didn’t have the budget for an in-house developer/designer. So, all website development had to be done remotely. The back and forth of emailing their admittedly large volume of tweaks and changes was frustrating for the developers and costly for the company.
With looming deadlines, they needed a solid amount of site work done on significantly less than a shoestring budget. Specifically, content pages with clickable images, collapsible accordions, product collections within collections and a “Contact Us” form that would send submissions straight to their inbox.
The team combed the Shopify App Store and tinkered with a number of different page builders. Hands down, they found Shogun to be the most turnkey and user-friendly option — especially for those on on the team with a hundred other startup hats to wear.
They were able to create the pages they needed to send to schools just in time for the end of the academic year. They could address questions with accordions, embed waste calculators, create form submissions and much more.
With Shogun, they had:
The Wisdom Supply Co. team was finally able to move beyond the costly and burdensome back and forth with remote developers to create the pages they need, as they need them.
They’re proud to say their homepage is built on Shogun. They particularly love the slider block feature; it allows them to tell a story using photos, equipped with scroll-over photo changes that link to collections.
Wisdom Supply Co. easily saved nearly a hundred hours of development time — the team estimates a solid 60 hours on pages built, and at least 30 additional hours on fixes, edits, changes and updates over the past year.
In addition to time, they saved a significant amount of money by not needing to defer to a remote developer for loads of tedious little changes. The company’s existing layouts are frequently evolving, and they’re always coming up with ideas for new pages — if they hadn’t been able to make the edits themselves, the costs of their frequent tinkering and editing would have added up to many thousands of dollars.
Based on a percentage of sales this past year with partnering schools, Wisdom Supply Co. estimates that, through a combination of new sales from their self-designed pages and dollars saved by doing the editing themselves, Shogun helped them realize an additional $20,000 in annual revenue.
Another bonus to using Shogun? Communication.
Before Shogun, the team felt constricted when trying to communicate with customers. Now, they feel in control of the way they’re able to “speak” their vision through the site. This is incredibly important for the brand — the impact of Wisdom Supply Co. is meant to extend beyond product sales to inform and empower individuals to reconsider wasteful behaviors and the products designed to enable them.
Today, they’re building Shogun pages to highlight educators who incorporate sustainability in their classrooms and their curriculum. Additionally, they’re creating a platform to connect students with incredible non-profits that are doing critical work around waste reduction and plastic pollution awareness.
So, would the team recommend Shogun to other brands?
In the words of the founders, “150%, yes.”
If your company isn’t set up with in-house developer or web-designer, do yourself a favor and give Shogun a try.
