Hey there, Shopifrolics!

OK … did you know that this Sunday is Father’s Day?

I love my Dad … TONS. But here’s the deal … Dad’s are the worst to buy gifts for. It always goes something like this:

So I show up on Sunday morning with a box of Bisquick and a pound of bacon in hand to find that, not only is breakfast already cooked, but there’s a new set of drill bits on the workbench and a pair of those laser-cut floor mats freshly delivered by UPS in the entry-hall.

Never fails.

That’s the thing with Dads … for most of us, by the time we as set in our careers and doing OK and are ready to give ‘em a little positive pay-back they are all set and just buy whatever the heck they want whenever they think of it.

Anyway …

I went looking for a Shopify store that exemplified the Father and Son spirit of the coming holiday. One that reflected the warmth of the everyman … the soul of meaning … the very embodiment of paternal bonding typified by playing catch in the backyard, apple pie, and AMERICA dang’it that makes this holiday great.

All I found was one that made me fell bad about not going to the gym more often. But it’s a pretty sharp site, so let’s have a look anyway.

Happy Selling,
Zach

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Shopify Teardown Target of the Week: FatherSonsClothing.com

So, when I saw the name of this business — FatherSonsClothing — I was thinking matching baseball jerseys, maybe a “world’s best dad” and “world’s best son” hats … but, no. I found a bunch of muscular and heavily tattooed Millennial hipsters.

Seriously … face tattoos?

Anyway … the obviously ironically-named FatherSonsClothing does not even have an About Us page. So, I thought I would make up their company history ….

OK, that’s a total fabrication, but admit it … it kind’a works.

The site only makes an oblique reference to their purpose and history in the footer:

“Designed by a Father & run by the Sons specialising in men’s shirts.”

So, let’s just leave it at that. I can see that they seem to have arrived on the Shopify platform in 2016 and upgraded to Shopify Plus in 2019. And I can also say that they sell a LOT of clothing, reaching the rarified air of being a top-4k Shopify site with estimated sales of nearly $10 million per year and customers in 88 countries. I guess over-inked hipster-jocks is a good business model.

The Shopify Theme That They Use

Here we have another multi-million dollar eComm business that proves “Zach’s Rule” — that you do not have to have a custom-built theme to rock the house. In this case, FatherSonsClothing is a heavily modified version of the Prestige Theme from our good buds at Maestrooo. I think that they started with the Allure variant, but the modifications could be fooling me.

You can see this very cool theme for yourself and take it for a test-drive in the Shopify Theme store here. But this is excellent work.

Stuff They Do Well

I do not want to sound like a fan-boy, but this site is super-good. Performance is a perfect balance of speed and quality. Photos and videos consistent and professional, well-optimized, and coded almost perfectly.

The product pages are truly exceptional. Look at this page on both desktop and mobile. On both, it is a great user experience. Note the sectional scrolling left-right on desktop view. See how the same elements are treated in mobile, customized for that view. Both versions load very fist considering the detail and heavy code lifting that is going on behind the scenes. This is VERY professional work. Even the spinning/pulsating logo at the top in desktop view looks even better in the mobile view.

Main navigation is all about style and selling that style. no distractions … all business. and as I noted earlier, even the About Us info is relegated to a single short sentence in the footer. Magic.

Shopping cart and checkout are clean and fast with solid deployment of Express checkout options.

Stuff That Needs Improvement

I have a few minor quibbles with things like SEO.

The logo is also too small on the Home page.

I also do not see an installment payment option anywhere … maybe it is not displaying? Seems like something worth trying. Maybe they have and it didn’t work for their audience.

Zach-o-meter Score

Strong in every dimension. No weak spots. Let’s give it my highest rating so far with a Zach-o-meter score of 9.5 out of 10.

The Shopify Apps They Use

As usual, we used our super-duper top secret Shopify website analysis tools to peek under the hood and see what apps they are running on the site. Take a look. If you like what you see on their site you may want to look into the apps that they are using too.

• OmniSend — eCommerce marketing automation.

• Affiliately — Affiliate marketing.

• Klaviyo — Customer lifecycle management.

• BackInStock — Inventory alerts.

• Bugsnag — This is the code cleaning tool of champions these days.

• MailChimp — They have the new MailChimp integration there, so good on them.

• Tidio — Live chat.

• PhotoSwipe — JavaScript photo gallery.

• CrUX Dataset — Behavioral analytics.

• YourAdChoices — Online advertising experience.

This is a pretty tight list and there is no evident function duplication. Again, professional and disciplined deployment and utilization of apps.

Marketing Stuff That They Do

FatherSonsClothing is actually don a TON of marketing and advertising. They have an aggressive email address collection and email campaign. They are running target banner and retargeting ads. I could not find any search ads, but sometimes brands run those separately through an agency, so it’s hard to be certain. They are also running an affiliate marketing campaign. I wish I had insight into how well it is working for them. But they have been maintaining it for a while so I suspect it is working well.

They also have well-provisioned social media sites, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. The posts on all but YouTube are professional, well-composed, relevant, and current. YouTube has not seen any love in a few years. In addition, they are AGGRESSIVELY running Facebook and Instagram ads. Literally dozens so far in June alone. This is obviously working for them. I have included 3 recent sample below for your review and inspiration.

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