Since 2014, Parachute has been on a mission to bring comfort home with premium bedding and home goods. Founded by design enthusiast Ariel Kaye, what started as a direct-to-consumer startup has grown into a $100M+ brand with sophisticated omnichannel operations spanning online sales, retail stores, and B2B hospitality divisions.
Parachute's journey with Shopify began on day one, but their rapid growth led them through an ambitious technical evolution. They transitioned to a headless Shopify solution in 2019 to support complex bundle selling and expanding omnichannel requirements. But this path ultimately led them away from Shopify's evolving native capabilities and required a large engineering team to maintain functionality that Shopify was solving at enterprise scale.
By 2024, Parachute made the strategic decision to return to Shopify's unified platform, embracing native features over custom development. After fully unifying their sales channels on Shopify, Parachute has achieved:
- Over $1 million in annual operational cost savings
- $30,000 monthly revenue from a $9/month app
- 1,300 buy online pick up in-store (BOPIS) orders in Q4 2024, representing 35% of annual BOPIS volume
- 12% retail AOV growth in past five years
The Challenge: Technical debt versus business growth
Parachute's rapid ascent from startup to $100M+ brand brought increasingly complex operational challenges that tested the limits of their commerce stack. Their journey through custom solutions revealed the hidden costs of technical flexibility at enterprise scale.
The transition to a headless Shopify solution in 2019 was driven by specific business needs. As Parachute's SVP of Operations Meg Marsh explains, "We hit a roadblock with Shopify. As a bedding company, one of the main things we sell are sheet sets, but we also saw that there was a lot of opportunity for customers who wanted just individual components of those sets. So we made the decision in 2019 to go headless in order to sell bundles the way we wanted to." The decision dramatically expanded their technical complexity. "We went from having a two-person software engineering team to having fourteen people on our technology team and built a whole suite of tools," she adds.
The headless approach created new operational challenges that compounded over time. As Parachute expanded to physical stores, their custom setup prevented them from accessing new Shopify POS features that could have improved their business operations. The fragmented approach meant missing out on unified inventory visibility and integrated customer data across channels.
Most critically, the custom approach increasingly isolated them from platform innovation. "As Shopify rolled out new features, they weren't available to us because we weren't using things in the way that Shopify intended us to," says Meg.
The breaking point came when they built their own checkout system. "We actually went and built the first step of checkout. This meant that all of our software engineers were now on call to fix checkout the second it goes down, which is our team of fourteen people versus Shopify's team of thousands of software engineers." For Meg, this highlighted a fundamental resource allocation problem. "We're building solutions that Shopify had already solved. And this means that instead of investing in our customers' experience, we're investing in the things that our customers don't even see."
They felt it on the retail side as well as they couldn't take advantage of the new features being launched in Shopify POS due to their headless setup. As Calvin Shayer, Parachute's VP of Retail explains, "We had to watch other brands as they were able to improve their customer experience, improve their omnichannel experience, while we were stuck behind."
The Solution: Enterprise-grade unified commerce at scale
Parachute's decision to embrace Shopify's unified commerce platform came as the team came to realize how much its capabilities had evolved to serve them as a large brand with complex technical needs. It was clear the innovation on the platform outpaced their team's ability to keep up, and by leaving the development work to Shopify, they could invest in higher ROI initiatives and strategies.
In the past two years, Shopify has invested heavily in larger brands and has closed the technology gap exceeding far beyond what our team had built.
Native features eliminate custom development
The key breakthrough came when Shopify introduced native split shipments functionality. "Split shipments is a really good example of this. We've always felt that it was really important for our customers to be able to understand when they're going to get their product from us," Meg notes. "Shopify actually offering this natively made it a no brainer for us to move back."
Unified Data Transforms Service Delivery
Having unified customer profiles transformed their service delivery. "One of the big benefits too of having this unified experience is that our retail store associates have access to all of the customer information that we would need to help customers make informed decisions, understanding the purchasing behavior, make sure sure that we're giving them the best service possible," says Calvin.
Meg notes how unified data has eliminated friction across all touchpoints. "Sometimes our customers will call our stores thinking they're calling our customer service team, but the store associates can actually answer their question for them." These capabilities reinforce brand cohesion: "By having the visibility to that customer on a more global basis, we're able to keep it seamless, and that's why customers think of us just as Parachute and not Parachute Retail or Parachute Digital," adds Calvin.
App Ecosystem Delivers Immediate ROI
The flexibility of Shopify through native features and the app ecosystem eliminated the vast majority of Parachute's custom development requirements. "We can go find an app for nine dollars a month, install it, and see if it works. We recently installed a post purchase upsell, and I think we pay nine dollars a month for it, and it generates $30,000 a month," says Meg. "That's something that's only possible with the Shopify app ecosystem."
Shopify Flow also gave the team powerful automation capabilities without requiring engineering resources. "I can set up a Flow in five minutes and test it and make sure it works and set it live, which has been a huge time saver," says Calvin.
Shopify has provided some really incredible updates that have really revolutionized the way that we manage and think of our inventory on a global basis. We're also an ERP integrated Shopify consumer, so there's a lot of emphasis on making sure that we understand that we have the right inventory, right place, right time, and that we have comprehensive visibility to it.
The Results: Enterprise efficiency drives measurable growth
Operational Efficiency Delivers $1M+ Savings
Shopify's unified platform delivered immediate operational and strategic benefits across Parachute's business, with measurable impact on both costs and revenue growth. The team projects that moving from a headless setup to a full Shopify theme will save Parachute over $1 million a year in operational expenses, including headcount and software, while dramatically improving their operational capabilities.
Omnichannel Growth Drives Revenue
Retail performance improved significantly through unified commerce capabilities. Average order value in retail locations is growing thanks to store associates having access to complete customer profiles and purchase history, enabling personalized service that drives larger transactions and stronger customer relationships.
Buy Online, Pick Up In Store (BOPIS) functionality has taken off as well, providing both operational efficiency and customer acquisition benefits. "Being able to leverage Shopify's buy online, pick up in store feature actually allows us to tell our online customers that we even have stores," says Meg. "This allows us to drive traffic to the stores where we know that customers have a really great experience." In Q4 2024 alone, BOPIS generated 1,300 orders representing 35% of their annual BOPIS volume, with the quarter accounting for 48% of their total annual BOPIS revenue. The program averages 3,500 orders annually, demonstrating strong customer adoption of omnichannel shopping behaviors.
Advanced Fulfillment Optimizes Operations
Ship-from-store capabilities transformed inventory management and customer satisfaction. With tens of thousands of ship-from-store orders across all locations throughout the year, Parachute has successfully transformed how they fulfill online orders from optimal locations.
Being able to put inventory into our stores knowing that it's not going to limit our ability to sell to a digital consumer has been really, really helpful, especially over this last holiday season.
Advanced order routing has also delivered both cost savings and improved customer experiences. "We're not going to be shipping things from Los Angeles to New York when the customer is in the middle of the country. We can leverage a store that's much more central," says Calvin, noting how this global inventory access has led to cost savings, better customer experiences, and better online experiences. And as Meg adds, the system's configurability allows real-time optimization: "If one of our stores gets overloaded because they've got some extra inventory, we can turn off their ship-from-store for a little bit to let them catch up."
Platform Simplicity Transforms Customer and Employee Experiences
Shopify's unified platform delivered the effortless efficiency that had been missing from Parachute's custom development approach. The platform's intuitive accessibility empowers teams to adapt tools independently, eliminating the technical barriers that previously required specialized engineering resources. "Shopify's suite of tools is so easy to use. I was actually editing our store this morning on my phone," says Meg, emphasizing the value of having such a powerful tool in her pocket that empowers teams to get things done wherever they are.
Calvin adds how Shopify Analytics has benefitted the retail team, saying, "It's kind of purpose built to be very, very simplistic and easy to use and navigate, and it never ceases to amaze me the kind of reporting that our team build that help inform their decisions."
Shopify POS exemplifies the same intuitive design philosophy found across all Shopify solutions, enabling faster onboarding and greater independence for retail associates. The consistent interface allows part-time associates to quickly become proficient, reducing the operational burden on management while improving customer service consistency.
Looking Ahead
Parachute is expanding their unified approach to include B2B operations. Meg says, "We'll be moving that business to Shopify B2B to allow those customers to just go purchase for themselves in the storefront," eliminating manual order processing for their hospitality division and helping them to continue delivering on their mission of transforming more houses into homes. No matter the strategic direction they want to go next, the team is confident they can achieve their vision in partnership with Shopify.
