CheckoutWeekly/TaskHusky Curated Newsletter #2144

Hey *|FNAME|* — A Tale of Centaurs and Unicorns That’s No Myth … on Shopify

Hello —

I feel silly. First of all, I’m a bit off my game today. I normally write your favorite Shopify eCommerce newsletter on Mondays. Why? Because Sunday is football day. But I am writing this on Sunday when I should be watching a game. I love you guys, but given the choice between working or watching America’s favorite college team — the Michigan State Spartans — on TV …. well, let’s just say don’t make me choose. But this is normally not an issue because I write these on Mondays. Except for today ... because today is Sunday and I am obviously writing. I have work appointments tomorrow and I just can’t let you all down. So, today’s the day. Thus silliness. So, I thought I’d find the current #1 Shopify store in the universe to tell you about. And when I started reading about it I thought two more things:

  1. This site has such a cool name!

  2. Why would a fashion brand name themselves after Greek mythology?

Do you know what a Centaur is? It’s that thing with the head and torso of a man and the body and legs of a horse. Cool, right? Sometimes they show it holding a spear or a bow and arrow looking all cool and horse-like and running off through the woods. I could only imagine what kinds of crazy-cool merch I could buy on a website named “Centaur.” Maybe an archery set … or iron horseshoes … they’d have to sell beard oil ‘cuz all those Greek heroes had big ‘ol hipster beards … ooooo, and they’d have to sell togas, right? But this is the second reason that I feel silly. The #1 Shopify site in the world right now has nothing to do with Centaurs at all. I misread it. But it is a Unicorn … as in a startup that goes pubic with a market cap of more than $1 billion. Before I embarrass myself any more, here’s this week’s Shopify teardown.Happy Selling,Zachary

This Week’s Target: Cettire.com

Dean Mintz is notoriously camera-shy. He is a tech guy who founded Ark Technologies Pty Ltd. in 2014 to do something geeky that no one remembers. What people DO remember is that in 2017 he founded Cettire – an online retailer of luxury fashion clothing and accessories. And after three short years the rarely photographed Mr. Mintz took Cettire public on December 18, 2020.

That little retailing side gig now has annual sales of >$92 million and is growing at 227% year/year with a grows profit of ~$22 million. And at the current stock price of $4.32 per share, it has a market cap of $1.56 billion. If you are interested, they trade on the Australia Stock Exchange under the

.

Luxury goods means super-high-end brands like Versace, Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana, Salvatore Ferragamo, and Michigan State team jerseys. They boast that they carry 500 brands in total. As far as I can tell, they sell globally from their site and on social media … more on that in the Marketing section below.

The Theme That They Use

When you have a $1 billion+ market cap, you tend not to worry about the cost of a custom theme. And they have one … security is tight on it too. They update it regularly, following the fashion seasons. The last update was on September 11 (I might have chosen a different day).

What They Did Good

The site is clean and competent. Although the theme is custom, aside from a few interesting animations it looks darn-near off the shelf.

Here’s the deal … the site looks fine. But take a look for yourself …

there is just nothing special here as far as the website goes.

Looks like their entire go-to-market budget is spent on social media and Google ads (see below).

What Needs to Be Improved

They rely a LOT on ads in social media and Google keyword ads based on brands. Obviously, it’s working, but they spend almost no resources on SEO as far as I can see.

No Express Payment options. And I can’t see any scheduled/installment payment apps like AfterPay or similar. When you are selling

and

like these guys are, you’d think that would be a no-brainer.

The Apps That They Use

  • GoSquared — Real-time engagement metrics.

  • Onmisend — eCommerce marketing automation.

  • Riskified — Fraud and Charge-back prevention.

  • Algolia — In-site search.

  • FastClick — Lower click delays on touch UIs.

  • MaxMind — Geographic analytics.

  • Impact — Ad spend optimization.

This $1.5 billion Shopify eCommerce store only has 7 apps. Think about it.

That's a whole lotta swagger on the catwalk.

Marketing Stuff That They Do

Cettire is VERY active on

and

. This and search ads are where they’ve spent all their money from day 1. Below you will find 3 recent Ad Words campaigns and 3 recent Facebook ad sets for your review and inspiration.

Sponsored

Is your Shopify site out of style? If you need help making Shopify website tweaks or fixing those little nagging things on your Shopify store, let’s get stuff done.

.

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