“Skullcandy is a lifestyle brand at heart,” says CEO Brian Garofalow. “We’re always looking for the next risk to take.” From a Park City chairlift “aha moment” in 2003 to a global community of riders and music lovers, the ethos hasn’t changed. When Skullcandy went full send on DTC, its flagship site was the inflection point. The next “risk” was clear: switch to Shopify, or fall behind.
Their previous platform couldn’t keep up—simple ideas turned into development barriers, all-out stalls, and all too many “not now’s”, but Shopify helped unlock the side of Skullcandy the team always knew was there: a fast, mobile‑first, experiment‑ready flagship site that moves at the speed of culture.
Skullcandy didn’t just replatform—they transformed their entire digital experience in just 90 days, shifting from maintenance mode to innovation velocity. The site got fast and fearless. The culture flipped from “we can’t” to “how fast?” And the business shifted energy from ongoing maintenance to innovating moments that matter.
With Shopify, Skullcandy:
- Replatformed the U.S. site in 90 days; launched Canada and EU/UK within weeks.
- Saved three months and millions of dollars by simplifying their tech stack.
- Dropped homepage load time to 0.8s (from 2.8s); cut PDP load times in half
- Delivered the most successful holiday sales period ever, with 45% YoY revenue growth (2023-2024).
- Launched Method 360 ANC with sound by Bose, their biggest launch yet, resulting in a 200% spike in visits with zero performance issues.
- Launches product across global sites in an hour, down from a full day on previous platform
Migrating to Shopify unlocked the side of Skullcandy that we always knew was there.
The challenge: A fast brand stuck on a slow tech stack
Before Shopify, Skullcandy’s ambitions outpaced its old platform. Its flagship site couldn’t keep pace with the brand’s ambitions to compete against the giants in the industry. For Evin Catlett, Global Vice President of Skullcandy, she knew that Shopify would unlock Skullcandy's true potential as a fast-moving lifestyle brand. And they needed to move fast.
When constantly saying “no” was hurting culture
Skullcandy aimed to transform their homepage into its flagship destination for the brand by prioritizing immersive storytelling, engaging content, and an effortless online shopping experience for its predominantly mobile user base. But, the previous platform couldn’t keep up. Creative ideas like enhanced PDPs, special branded moments, and new features became dev‑heavy projects with lengthy timelines.
There were limitations that really throttled creativity. It felt like we had to say no to a lot of things.
If the brand was going to push its creative limits, it needed to remove the tech boundaries.
Maintenance over momentum
The stack had evolved into a tangle of custom elements that demanded constant care. A multi‑step checkout required ongoing attention and annual “optimization” cycles. A separate PIM created a black‑box sync layer that made product setup and catalog changes hard to troubleshoot with lack of transparent data. Integrations to ERP, 3PL, and shipping were complex and fragile enough that peak‑season resilience was a worry.
Internally, the center of gravity tilted toward keeping the lights on. As Mark Hopkins, CIO of Skullcandy puts it, the team spent too much time on monitoring and “making sure that things were flowing” instead of adding capability—the foundation wasn’t aging well.
The crossroads: keep funding constraints, or invest in the brand
At the leadership level, the trade‑off was stark: continue pouring time, money, and people into the previous platform—or redirect those resources to a new platform where they could accelerate their brand’s growth.
We were at a crossroads with our old platform where we had to decide: do we want to continue investing in development there, or free up resources for product and marketing?
They chose the brand. And they chose Shopify to power it.
The solution: A fast migration that unlocked the brand’s potential
The goal was clear with Shopify: gain a stable platform, increase revenue, and be agile. Success would mean creating a lightweight operating model to lower the burden on the team to keep their site both beautiful and performant.
And they needed to do it very quickly—specifically, by March 2024. It was December 2023.
“I challenged the team with an aggressive timeline: to go live [on Shopify] within just 90 days,” says Evin Catlett. “Initially, there was concern and a lot of doubt. But once we officially kicked off, everybody quickly saw a path to, ‘This is actually going to happen.’” With previous migrations, “moving to other platforms took nine months,” says Jenny Buchar, Director, Global Digital Experience at Skullcandy. “With Shopify, we migrated in 90 days.”
A 90‑day migration with an experience reset
Skullcandy didn’t lift‑and‑shift—they reset the entire experience. Locked-in on their bold plan, they brought in Wick Creative to move fast with a clear runway. “They’d never been able to really fully communicate the brand in the way they wanted to because they didn’t have the opportunity to be flexible, and ultimately, any boundary to flexibility is a barrier to innovation,” says Scott Wickberg.
Thirty days in, end‑to‑end test orders were already flowing from Shopify into their ERP, NetSuite—proof the 90‑day target was real. The day of the launch, go‑live felt like mission control: countdown, call‑outs, first production order—then quiet. No fires. No scramble. “Just high‑fives all around,” Mark says, then straight into optimization. “We were waiting for the other shoe to drop, and it just didn’t,” says Jenny.
The momentum didn’t stop there. Skullcandy went global in weeks, not quarters. After the U.S. site launched in 90 days, just two weeks later, Canada followed. Three weeks after that, EU, and UK went live. The full global footprint stood up on Shopify roughly seven weeks post-US—no re‑plumbing, just repeatable patterns and speed.
Checkout and order flow: standardize the core, speed up everything
Checkout was an obstacle in the order flow. On the previous platform, Skullcandy ran a custom checkout system that required five touchpoints that demanded constant attention—every year the team debated another round of “checkout optimization,” then braced for heavy testing because any change risked breaking the flow.
We took a very complex five‑step checkout system and brought it down to a single step in Shopify.
On Shopify, they dropped the custom system for Shopify Checkout and Shop Pay. Orders started moving like the brand does. Overnight, the checkout process collapsed to a single step—with REST APIs and webhooks handling the order processing and GraphQL keeping bulk inventory updates snappy—and the engineering burden vanished. Instead of tuning checkout, the team lets Shopify ship improvements—and focuses its time where it moves the needle.
Transparent and predictable data, not black boxes
The standalone PIM was the definition of tech stack drag—opaque syncs, tricky troubleshooting. Skullcandy eliminated it and now manages DTC catalog data directly in Shopify. Bulk changes run through the GraphQL API, updating hundreds of inventory records in a single call instead of feeding them one by one. Outputs are predictable, issues easier to trace, and the same REST/GraphQL interfaces continue to power new apps without friction.
Risk and extensibility without the drag
Fraud screening got sharper and simpler to manage. Skullcandy consolidated checks in Shopify, pairing Shopify’s fraud logic with a third‑party tool and removing a maze of gates. When the team wants to try something new, there’s an app for it—tested and deployed quickly, without performance trade‑offs. The solutions unlocked in Shopify’s ecosystem sped up the answers instead of slowing them down. Their customer service team now uses Shopify as the source of truth for ecommerce orders.
Faster merchandising fuels the brand
Speed became standard operating procedure. Site merchandisers take products from content to live in minutes, without tickets. A full launch runs in about an hour per region including QA instead of day or week-long marathons. In an eight‑week stretch, the team launched six products across multiple regions—without breaking a sweat.
It used to take us an entire day to launch a single product across our four regions. That's now condensed down to one hour complete with quality assurance so that we can move on to the next region.
With fewer developer dependencies, budget moved from maintenance to growth—paid reach, athlete and ambassador programs, and influencer activation. As Jenny puts it, “[Shopify] has allowed us to focus on growth and innovation rather than managing daily tasks."
The results: Startup speed at enterprise scale
With the foundation in place, the gains showed up fast—speed, velocity, agility, and a huge culture boost for the team.
Delivered immediate performance gains
The performance lift was immediate and durable. The day after launch, the homepage dropped to 0.8 seconds (from 2.8), and their top‑revenue PDP cut its load time roughly in half (from 9.4 seconds to 4.2) even as the team layered in richer content experiences—directly contributing to improved session times and conversion rates. They went from a fair user experience score at 79% to an excellent score at 94% within a week of launching on Shopify. Accessibility scores improved with minimal effort. Most importantly, stability became the default—the site turned into a reliable stage for brand storytelling and conversion.
Since migrating to Shopify, the biggest win is a fabulous customer experience on a really stable and reliable platform.
Holiday at full throttle with 45% growth YoY
Skullcandy’s first full holiday season on Shopify in 2024 brought scale without stress. They saw as high as 45% revenue growth compared to the prior year on their old platform. A stable Shopify Checkout, combined with Shop Pay’s one‑tap flow, made repeat purchases effortless—especially on mobile. With the platform steady, the team spent the season optimizing instead of firefighting.
Since migrating to Shopify, we had the most seamless and successful holiday sales period that Skullcandy has ever experienced—seeing 45% growth versus the prior year.
From “we can’t” to “how fast?” — creativity unlocked
On the previous platform, great ideas stalled. On Shopify, the default flipped to yes. The team showcases Skullcandy’s brand on a foundation that empowers them to make experimentation routine and move fast on creative ideas. “It’s very easy to be experimental,” says Mark. “It’s very easy to put something in, back it out if you don’t like it. So much excitement has been generated on my team.” As Jenny puts it, “we used to say no to our best ideas—now we say yes and ask how fast we can get it done.”
Shopify reliability means confidence to dream bigger.
A loyalty program that finally had room to run
For years, the team wanted a loyalty program that felt like an invitation into the lifestyle brand. On Shopify, they launched Soundlab and amplified it across the site with exclusive drops, early access, and points for purchases and actions. Evin shares that “without Shopify, Soundlab wouldn’t have come to fruition the way we’d hoped.” Shopify’s platform made it possible; the brand made it magnetic. It also gave Skullcandy a direct line to superfans for major moments like big product drops.
Launching the biggest drop, sticking the landing
Earlier in 2025, Skullcandy introduced Method 360 ANC with sound by Bose and told the story with Tony Hawk at their in-person launch event. The site went big creatively—including “zip‑liners” racing across the homepage—without sacrificing speed or stability. The launch resulted in a 200% spike in visits at launch with zero performance issues and no transaction hiccups under peak load. It was the most successful product launch in company history.
For our biggest product launch of the year, we saw a 200% increase in site visits and zero performance issues.
From here, its full send for Skullcandy
This is what happens when a challenger brand gets a platform that doesn’t just keep up, but propels the brand forward. Ideas ship faster. Drops land cleaner. Fans get a better experience everywhere—on mobile, at peak, and in the cultural scenes that matter.
Skullcandy now moves with startup speed at enterprise scale. By simplifying the stack in 2024, the team saved three months and millions of dollars—reallocating energy to product, marketing, and community. The roadmap ahead feels limitless and the platform powering them is dialed in.
With Shopify, we feel future‑proof.
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