The Mountain reaches new heights with BigCommerce

The Mountain success story

In the early 1970s, two friends from New Jersey moved to New Hampshire with little more than a dream to sell belts and buckles at local fairs and festivals. Based on positive feedback from customers, the duo opened their first retail store in 1972 under the brand “The Mountain” which was inspired by the store’s most popular item, a belt adorned with a mountain scene.

In the years that followed, the company quickly grew to 30 retail locations across the mid-Atlantic states, finding a niche selling hand-dyed and printed tees. Soon thereafter, The Mountain started a print shop and began producing and distributing its own officially-licensed line of t-shirts featuring iconic musicians, including The Grateful Dead, Bob Marley and Jimi Hendrix.

Eventually, a wholesale distribution arm of the company was created for its licensed tees, and the company’s tagline “Green Never Goes Out of Style” developed from a commitment to eco-conscious manufacturing practices.

Today, the company is widely-recognized for its popular line of Big Face tees and for producing the most famous t-shirt in the history of the internet.

Global expansion and rebranding with BigCommerce

As told to BigCommerce by Lindsey Reis, Marketing Manager, themountain.com

In 2008, one of our t-shirt designs, the “Three Wolf Moon” shirt, skyrocketed in popularity and its Amazon review went viral. It became clear that we needed a website.

We understood that every business needs a web presence in order to stay relevant and discoverable, and we began to search for an ecommerce platform.

We chose BigCommerce because we needed a platform that had the capability to grow with us.

After experiencing continued success after the Three Wolf Moon shirt, we decided to update our branding to properly reflect our quality artwear and keep us competitive with other companies’ sites.

Redesign leads to a 33% MoM increase in conversion rate

As told to BigCommerce by Lindsey Reis, Marketing Manager, themountain.com

Rebranding with BigCommerce behind us has transformed us into a new and improved The Mountain.

We have an in-house art department that designs all of our web assets, catalogs, images and art for our products and more. We decided to rebrand our company so we could retain consistency across the board. As part of this effort, we wanted to address functionality on the website including implementing a simplified design and improving site navigation and speed.

With BigCommerce, we hoped to improve the customer experience, boost organic rankings and increase conversion rates. In just 30 days after launching our rebrand, we saw an increase in MoM conversion rate of over 33%!

Built-in promotional tools help grow sales

As told to BigCommerce by Lindsey Reis, Marketing Manager, themountain.com

Our customers love to save money, but we try to be strategic about our offers, what items we’re discounting, to whom, and how often – all while prioritizing our most loyal shoppers. Because of this, we need specific tools to successfully execute our promotions.

With BigCommerce, we can easily create unique coupon codes, which we are using to instill urgency and drive our customers more quickly to the point of purchase.

We also utilize a master marketing calendar, task managers like Asana, Basecamp and JIRA, and SailThru for our email service provider. Through segmentation and personalization, these tools have helped us effectively increase our ecommerce sales using timely promotions.

Powerful ecommerce analytics and insights guide data-driven merchandising strategy

As told to BigCommerce by Lindsey Reis, Marketing Manager, themountain.com

At The Mountain, we utilize BigCommerce Insights on a daily basis. Specifically, we reference the analytics to collect data on sales numbers, orders placed, and units sold.

We also frequently export our sales by item report. The large amount of SKUs we have requires us to constantly check our highest-selling products.

Using these insights, we are then able to make informed choices about merchandizing, prioritizing products that aligns with top-performing campaigns and best sellers.

An innovative product built for growth

As told to BigCommerce by Lindsey Reis, Marketing Manager, themountain.com

Through our recently launched 'My Mountain' initiative, we are starting to give customer the ability to create unique, fully-customized Mountain Artwear products. With BigCommerce’s robust and scalable Stencil design framework, we are now able to deliver unique experiences like this that were previously not possible.