Positive Grid, a company founded by musicians and tech rock stars, is redefining what’s possible for guitar players. Their smart, connected tools—like the AI-powered Spark amp that Guitar World magazine called one of the “50 Greatest Moments” in electric guitar history—have captured a loyal, global following. On a mission to become a household name, Positive Grid needed a commerce platform that could match the ambition and innovation of its products.
By migrating to Shopify, Positive Grid was able to build a flexible, high-converting commerce engine that unlocked global growth and empowered their lean team to innovate.
With Shopify, Positive Grid:
- Increased conversion rate by up to 6x compared to on their previous platform.
- Launched six localized regional sites that they were unable to before.
- Achieved their best holiday season ever immediately following their Shopify launch.
The challenge: A hard-coded site that stalled a high-growth, global brand
Positive Grid’s growth roadmap was stifled by the surprising lack of flexibility they found on their previous platform. With a hard-coded front end, every minor site update required developer intervention, robbing the marketing team of the agility needed to run a modern ecommerce business. This rigidity created significant operational bottlenecks and limited their ability to scale.
As a global brand operating in the US, Canada, Australia, the EU, UK, and Japan, the inability to create localized experiences was a major roadblock. All regions saw the same generic content. “On our previous platform, we weren't able to create unique content for each of the different regions,” explains Jackie Hundemann from Positive Grid. “Everything was just on one site.”
Checkout friction was also high. "Prior to Shopify,” Jackie explains, “we had this multi-step checkout process." As a result, conversion rates were lower than they’d hoped. "On the front end, everything was hard coded and custom," says Jackie. “That does not allow our marketers or our merchandisers to be nimble in everything that they have to do in their day-to-day operations.”
The site they’d built on their previous platform was limiting their ability to scale and grow at a time where they needed to be able to quickly scale their business and expand internationally.
We were in high growth mode, and we really needed a platform to help us get to where we need it to be and scale our business.
The solution: Strategic migration to unlock agility, personalization, and global reach
Having used Shopify since 2010, Jackie championed an immediate migration, confident it was the platform Positive Grid needed to grow. The team executed a full site redesign on Shopify, focusing on creating a best-in-class customer experience that matched their innovative products.
I knew that we had to vet Shopify for Positive Grid, and we landed on migrating to the platform.
The impact was immediate. Shopify unlocked the ability for marketers to merchandise the site themselves, freeing the development team to focus on bigger projects. The checkout was streamlined into a single-page process with Shop Pay, reducing friction and boosting conversion.
With Shopify’s global infrastructure, Positive Grid launched six localized regional sites, allowing them to deliver unique, relevant experiences to customers worldwide.
Shopify has allowed us to better serve our customers around the world with a localized experience. Now we have six different regional sites that provide a unique experience for our customers all over the world.
The team also leveraged Shopify’s robust ecosystem of partners. They integrated with Yotpo for ratings, reviews, and a global loyalty program, and partnered with Bloomreach to enable hyper-personalization.
It was a very seamless process. We were able to simply go into the app store and navigate through different service providers of customization, and we're able to seamlessly integrate with one of 'em, and the rest is history. Now we have customization on our site.
With Shopify, Positive Grid implemented crucial loyalty program pricing with different price books, a feature their previous platform lacked. This allows registered customers to see special pricing, supporting their upgrade program by offering unique pricing to loyal Positive Grid consumers who bought their original amp. Jackie calls this "game-changing," fostering customer loyalty and creating brand evangelists.
Shopify is easy to use, intuitive, and it's been great just to see how fast we're able to get things on the site. The integrations are seamless. It's game-changing.
The results: Turned up conversion rate 6x, record holiday sales, and a future-proofed tech stack
The migration to Shopify delivered immediate and transformational results. After launching their new site in October 2022, Positive Grid had its best holiday season ever.
Their conversion rate saw a 6x increase driven by improved site speed, a frictionless checkout, and a superior mobile experience. The new, richer product detail pages (PDPs) allowed for better customer education and storytelling, helping users understand the depth of their products, which in turn increased Average Order Value (AOV).
It's been tremendous to see not just the conversion rate growth, but also our growth in basket size AOV.
The development team, now free from constant maintenance requests, could focus on a "bigger picture" roadmap, including hyper-personalization and leveraging AI for future site experiences.
This new agility has been critical as Positive Grid expands its omnichannel strategy, selling wholesale to major retailers like Guitar Center and supporting new product launches across both DTC and B2B channels.
We have been able to provide a more seamless experience for our customers with Shopify. Our site is much faster. We have more payment options like Shop Pay. We were able to create a better mobile experience.
Amplifying innovation in the music industry with the world’s most innovative commerce platform
The migration to Shopify has provided Positive Grid with a flexible, future-proofed platform to support its mission of becoming a household name for musicians everywhere.
With their operational bottlenecks removed, the team has shifted its focus from maintenance to innovation, allowing them to pursue ambitious projects, such as new AI-driven product and app launches, creating a more seamless experience for their wholesale dealers, and continuing to innovate on product personalization.
Shopify empowers you to move beyond maintenance, focusing instead on innovation, growth, and making smart, bold moves.
Positive Grid sees AI as a critical part of its future, both in its smart amps and in its customer experience. The team is confident that as Shopify continues to invest in its own AI capabilities, they will have the tools they need to stay at the forefront of the industry. “I know Shopify is at the forefront of the latest and greatest,” Jackie says, “so I trust that we are future proofed in that way.”
With a clear vision for "world domination," Positive Grid is poised to be wherever guitarists are around the world, inspiring them to play more, and to grow with the brand.
If you are truly looking to future proof your business and you're on a mission to really scale, Shopify is a good partner to get you there.
