BigCommerce Energizes MitoQ Right Down to the Core of its Business

Power to the people

Mitoquinol Mesylat is not your run of the mill CoQ10 antioxidant. It’s a targeted antioxidant molecule that scientists, Professors Mike Murphy and Robin Smith of the University of Otago in New Zealand, were able to make small enough to be absorbed directly into the energy-producing environment of human cells, the mitochondria.

Stress at the cellular level can easily impact most, if not every, aspect of a person’s life. The scientists sought to target cell stress to help people unlock more energy, experience faster recovery and age in a much healthier fashion.

These outcomes led Murphy and Smith to release their discovery, not as a pharmaceutical drug, but as a health product to be available to any and everyone. They named their product and the company MitoQ. A skincare product was the company’s first release, which was soon followed by a range of supplements.

With the United States and China as its two largest markets, this New Zealand-based company ships to more than 140 countries around the world. “We've seen phenomenal growth. Certainly in the last four or five years where we've almost doubled in size as a global business. We feel if we can get it right in the US market, which is a big, highly competitive consumer market, then we should be able to take MitoQ anywhere,” said Head of Customer Acquisition Shaun Price.

CHALLENGE

Security and scale

MitoQ began its ecommerce journey on Magento. That’s until they were hacked in 2018 and customer data was compromised. Banks refused to work with MitoQ unless it could achieve PCI Security Level 1 within a certain period of time.

“We scrambled to rebuild the website on a secure platform called Ecwid. They took all the PCI risk versus us carrying the risk on Magento,” said Price. However, the challenge we faced with Ecwid was that it was a niche solution more suited for very small businesses and we quickly outgrew it.”

Because Ecwid didn’t handle multi-currency, MitoQ had to have separate Ecwid instances for each currency it operated in. Additionally, it did not handle multiple price lists. “That meant we had to have a separate Ecwid instance for each currency multiplied by our two price lists: retail and wholesale. To say we were managing a lot of Ecwid instances is an understatement. To make a single change we had to do it 10 times,” Price said.

Although the Ecwid platform allowed for a website that was secure and functional, it did not offer MitoQ’s customers the optimal experience. “We were losing customers through the funnel because the experience was a bit bumpy along the way with inconsistencies,” said Price. “We knew we needed to fix it, which is one of the reasons we decided to make the move towards headless ecommerce.”

SOLUTION

BigCommerce makes the grade

 MitoQ began its search for a new ecommerce platform in mid-2019. Key platform requirements included providing a seamless and intuitive customer experience, the ability to scale at will, a robust subscription solution and headless ecommerce. Shopify Plus and Sana Commerce were vetted, but they didn’t make the grade. However, BigCommerce did and in July of 2020, MitoQ launched on the platform.

“To be honest, we were probably already too big for Shopify Plus and Sana Commerce. However, BigCommerce, as a platform, delivered on the key requirements we wanted. And, as an added bonus, our experience with the BigCommerce team was amazing. The people who onboarded us were absolutely brilliant,” Price said.

Understandably for MitoQ, PCI compliance was non-negotiable. “Actually, this is a great example of where working with BigCommerce has been incredible. Our external audit provider, which is Deloitte, already had a relationship with BigCommerce. So we were able to just go back to that agreement and Deloitte was satisfied that BigCommerce was secure. So it made the process a whole lot easier and speaks volumes about the integrity of the platform,” Price stated.

In addition to the above, MitoQ found the headless infrastructure to be very customizable and was pleased it allowed the company to do whatever it needed to do on the website, and still have an environment that offered a good ecosystem in terms of apps and plugins. “We wanted something that was going to be largely plug and play with other systems. Should we want to use them, we could seamlessly use existing integration tools to expand the functionality of our website,” Price said. 

Integral integrations

AfterShip was one of the first apps MitoQ put in place and it was a customer experience game changer. As an order tracker, it put an end to customer complaints about not knowing where their orders were. MitoQ’s team productivity went up because they no longer had to search for orders. AfterShip did it for them. 

MitoQ connected BigCommerce to Google BigQuery, a multi-cloud data warehouse that enables businesses to gather, store and analyze data crucial to the business for real-time insights.

And while MitoQ is currently setting up its new subscription integration, Recurly, it is also integrating BigCommerce to its enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, Microsoft Dynamics NAV. “The whole process was very much an infrastructure upgrade as it was a standard web project,” Price said.

RESULTS

People + Platform = Business Success 

 

BigCommerce’s people and its platform has helped MitoQ achieve YoY a 45% increase in revenue, a 86% increase in subscription growth and, more than doubling over the previous year, a 109% increase in page value.

“BigCommerce’s level of flexibility is phenomenal. I'm 100% sure we could not have had this type of flexibility if we'd chosen another ecommerce provider. From a relationship perspective, I think there's something to be said about the quality of the people in the organization. Service-wise, BigCommerce is second to none to be honest. We create tickets with BigCommerce, they're answered and done and I can't believe how quick it is. The bar for service is really high. So whatever you all are doing, you're doing it right,” Price said.

LOOKING AHEAD

From ambition to expansion

MitoQ is a relatively ambitious company. By the time this case study is published the company will have migrated to a new headless CMS, Craft, and completely rebuilt the front end of its website. Not only that, but the replacement of its subscription tool to Recurly will be complete as will BigCommerce's integration to the company’s ERP system.

MitoQ has its eyes fixed on global expansion as well. The company is considering doing business in India, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and other parts of Europe in the future.

One thing we know at BigCommerce, wherever MitoQ decides to go, we plan to be the flexible, scalable and service-oriented platform to ensure the company’s continued success.

Published: April 2022