Thompson Tee fits perfectly with new ecommerce platform and experiences a 94% increase in ROI

The Thompson Tee success story

Billy Thompson and Randy Choi first met through their wives who were longtime family friends.

At the time, Billy was working a sales role in the private jet industry. However, he had been working for years on an idea for an apparel line that addressed the issue of sweating.

Billy reached out to Randy, who not only worked in the apparel space, but also lives with the same medical condition that affects Billy - hyperhidrosis. Hyperhidrosis is a lifelong condition that causes over-sweating and affects at least 5 percent of the population.

With Randy’s background in apparel supply chain, along with entrepreneurial experience, the two joined forces to create Thompson Tee, providing a solution for people who were frustrated and embarrassed about their excessive underarm sweat. The company determined the best material and designed shirts that were comfortable and incredibly effective at blocking sweat.

The company officially launched in 2012 and started selling its products online.

Migrating from Magento to alleviate plugin problems

As told to BigCommerce by Billy Thompson, Co-founder, thompsontee.com

We originally started online sales from a turnkey platform called Volusion, which was simple to use for somebody who doesn't understand or have much experience with coding.

We quickly outgrew that platform, and from there, we moved to Magento. Magento was very difficult to use and required a full-time IT team, which we didn't have.

On the front end, we had to hire or pay services for something as simple as changing a font on the page. Anytime there was an upgrade in the platform itself, we would have issues with the plugins that weren’t compatible with the upgrade or newer version.

There always seemed to be some sort of domino effect, where if one thing changed with Magento, then another plugin or another app didn't work, and you would have to go in and do a CSI-type investigation to figure out what happened.

So we decided to move to BigCommerce.

BigCommerce eliminates integration issues experienced on Magento

As told to BigCommerce by Randy Choi and Billy Thompson, Co-founders, thompsontee.com

All the features on BigCommerce are great, and we haven't run into any technical issues.

We also haven’t had any issues with the integration of third-party apps and plugins. The difference between our experience with Magento and BigCommerce is night and day. That alone takes a lot of stress off of us, and it doesn't require us to apply resources that we normally wouldn't want to apply.

Magento was one huge headache after another - from security updates to parts of our site not functioning. With BigCommerce, none of that is a concern now, which is great. We don’t have to spend time worrying about that, and we can spend time on running our business.

Human Marketing agency drives growth

As told to BigCommerce by Randy Choi and Billy Thompson, co-founders of thompsontee.com

Human Marketing, our BigCommerce Agency Partner, has been instrumental in driving our online growth. 

Human has been with us for years – helping us dominate search engines, monetize our database, increase our conversion rate and maximize ROI.

In addition to executing our digital marketing, they supported us through our Shark Tank appearance and helped us select and replatform to BigCommerce.

Human is always looking for ways to optimize our BigCommerce environment. For the first time, our mobile traffic has overtaken our desktop traffic, and our marketing agency is hard at work to further optimize our site for mobile conversions.

Enhancing UX across channels with ShipStation

As told to BigCommerce by Randy Choi and Billy Thompson, Co-founders, thompsontee.com

ShipStation is a powerful tool that integrates well with BigCommerce - and even with the Amazon side because we have certain items that are seller-fulfilled, and we typically don't run into any issues.

We strive to provide a consistent customer experience across channels, whether someone orders a shirt from BigCommerce or Amazon.

We do our best in our product details on Amazon to make sure that everyone understands that the product is coming from the Thompson brand because, unfortunately, there are fraudulent re-sellers on Amazon. We do as much as we can to match the experience, despite the parameters that Amazon imposes on their sellers.

We want to keep that experience from a consumer standpoint as clear and seamless as possible for our brand, from product descriptions to shipping.

Product Market Fit Needs Proper Ecommerce Infrastructure to Win

As told to BigCommerce by Randy Choi, Co-founder, thompsontee.com

At Thompson Tee, we have experienced a 24% increase in conversions since migrating to BigCommerce. Our product actually works, and there's obviously a need for this type of solution.

But the other part of this growth has been leveraging digital marketing at the various levels, and you need to make sure you have a good platform like BigCommerce to transact as well.

BigCommerce is SEO-friendly and ensures everything is working correctly for us to maintain a stable website and secure transactions.

A platform that helps us rise to new levels to serve customers

As told to BigCommerce by Billy Thompson, Co-founder, thompsontee.com

This year, we are dedicated to continuing to distribute the best product possible, backed by the best service that we can provide.

We plan to expand our product line and give customers the convenience of purchasing additional products that they may need when coming to our website.

We send out surveys to our customers, and our customers are amazing. Their level of gratitude they express for our solution is humbling; it's fulfilling to read the testimonials that come in. This is what really keeps us going.