NRBY Clothing Delights Shoppers Online and In-Store to Achieve Triple Digit Growth

Founded by fashion industry veterans Jo Hooper and Cornelia Smith in 2019, NRBY Clothing is helping redefine women's fashion with comfortable, colorful clothing made from natural fibers that can be worn every day and (almost) everywhere. What began as a single pop-up has grown into three permanent retail locations in London and Bath, plus a popular online store.

For NRBY, meeting customers wherever they are has always been essential. "We launched online with Shopify at the same time we opened our pop-up store," says Jo, emphasizing their omnichannel approach. They chose Shopify's unified commerce platform to ensure a seamless launch and to avoid the integration complexity that can stifle retailers' growth.

With Shopify, NRBY Clothing has achieved:

• 250% growth From 2021 to 2024 from online and stores
• 70% email capture rate in store through Shopify POS
• 8% of net sales driven by multi-channel shoppers, which represent just 2% of customer base
• 30% conversion rate on limited production "Coming Soon" featured inventory

The Challenge: Avoiding omnichannel complexity from day one

When Jo and Cornelia decided to launch NRBY Clothing, they brought deep retail expertise from their years in corporate fashion. This experience taught them a crucial lesson: to be successful, retailers must be "wherever your customer wants to find you."

But achieving that presence both digitally and in-person traditionally came with significant operational complexity that would have meant managing separate systems for inventory, customer data, and reporting across channels. For a growing business focused on quality and craftsmanship, this fragmentation would have only gotten in their way.

NRBY's business model made unified operations even more critical. "We don't make thousands upon thousands of our styles," says Jo, highlighting their need for precise inventory visibility to deliver on customer expectations.

Jo and Cornelia also understood how today's shoppers have grown increasingly accustomed to beginning their shopping journeys online and completing purchases in-store, or vice versa. They expect to be able to call a store about an item that's sold out online and have staff locate it at another location. Without unified sales channels, providing this level of service would require manual processes that don't scale.

For a small team led by owner-operators, the choice was clear: find a platform that could handle omnichannel complexity from day one, or risk being overwhelmed by operational friction instead of focusing on growth.

The Solution: Shopify provides unified commerce foundation

NRBY Clothing chose Shopify from the beginning, recognizing that fully unified operations would be essential for delivering the personalized customer experience they envisioned. They partnered with LinedUp, a specialist Shopify agency, who understood their vision for seamless omnichannel operations and helped them get off the ground without a hitch.

Shopify POS quickly became a cornerstone of the brand's operations. "The fantastic thing is that since we launched, if you have an iPad and a payment device, you can set up your store anywhere," says Jo. This flexibility has enabled NRBY to operate not just their permanent stores, but also pop-up events, collaborations with other brands, and their wildly popular annual sample sales—all while maintaining unified inventory and customer data.

NRBY's email capture strategy exemplifies how unified operations help drive customer relationships. "We don't print receipts anymore," says Jo, sharing how they instead collect emails via Shopify POS, and ask customers to opt-in to marketing, which many do, giving NRBY "a powerful way to build relationships from the first interaction." This approach has proven highly effective, with NRBY achieving a 70% email capture rate, resulting in thousands of new email signups through in-store POS purchases.

This data foundation enables sophisticated marketing campaigns that span channels and create multiple touchpoints for customer engagement. "We send out brochures three or four times a season at the start of the month and probably around launching key collections," says Jo. "That goes to our warm customer base and to a cold database as well which is matched." The unified customer database makes segmented geographic targeting simple and means every interaction builds on the previous one.

In NRBY's stores, Shopify empowers staff to deliver the personalized service that differentiates NRBY from larger retailers. "You can identify a customer, look at their shopping habits without feeling intrusive and say, 'I can help you with this because I can see what you've bought in the past,'" says Jo. She also notes that training requirements for new staff have been minimal. "It's very intuitive. If you go wrong, you just go back. You just retrace your steps."

On the digital side, NRBY has seen great value from Shopify's app ecosystem. Shopify Flow automates customer re-engagement, adding customers to VIP segments and personalizing communications based on purchase history. Locksmith enables exclusive previews for collaborations, while Okendo powers their product reviews.

The Results: Triple-digit growth and continued retail expansion

NRBY has seen 250% growth on Shopify over the past three years across online and in-store sales channels, demonstrating the power of their unified approach.

The unified platform has created measurable impact across customer segments. Multi-channel shoppers who purchase both online and in-store represent just 2% of NRBY's customer base but drive 8% of total net sales. This 4X higher spending rate per customer demonstrates the value of seamless omnichannel operations.

Shopify's flexible platform also enables NRBY to implement creative demand capture strategies for their limited-production model. Their "Coming Soon" listings online consistently achieve 30% conversion rates and help loyal customers secure items before they sell out.

The brand's unified inventory view enables exceptional service moments daily. When online items sell out, staff can locate inventory across any store or fulfill directly from locations with the ship-from-store feature of Shopify POS. This capability transforms routine interactions into relationship-building opportunities. "There's nothing better than somebody going 'Oh my goodness that's amazing,'" says Jo, who notes how customer reviews often highlight their delight with the convenience of this service.

Shopify Analytics also provides crucial insights for making strategic decisions. "I always want to see how we've performed on the previous year," Jo explains, describing how she can customize date ranges to account for marketing campaigns and analyze performance across sessions, customers, sales, and returns. This visibility enables data-driven decisions about inventory, marketing spend, and expansion plans.

Jo shares how Shopify has democratized access to enterprise-level capabilities for entrepreneurs like herself. "Ten or fifteen years ago, you needed to build your own website, you needed £150,000 to do that. Now you can do it for £1,000 or less," she says. "Setting up our business at the time that we did with Shopify has meant that for a relatively small investment we had a very powerful tool at our fingertips."

With their recent store opening in Bath and international expansion on the horizon, NRBY continues to prove that authentic, personalized retail can thrive in the digital age.