WHO IS ELIJAH brings B2B and DTC together, achieving 50% international wholesale growth on Shopify

WHO IS ELIJAH was founded in 2018 by Raquel Bouris after discovering a unique scent at the Coachella music and arts festival in the US. Motivated by her own desire to find an inclusive, luxury fragrance that was both long-lasting and ethically made, Raquel set out on a mission to create a fragrance brand that broke all the rules and would rival big designer names.

Since their founding, WHO IS ELIJAH has grown rapidly from humble beginnings in Raquel’s garage in Sydney, Australia, to become a major player with multiple product lines. Now, the brand sells their unique products to both consumers and retailers all around the world.

Starting out as a largely wholesale business, WHO IS ELIJAH used Salesforce for B2B customers to order products in bulk via an online portal. But with a burgeoning online retail business powered by Shopify and a desire to expand internationally, the brand turned to the Shopify Plus plan to handle their fast-growing wholesale and retail needs with a single platform.

Since moving to the Shopify Plus plan, WHO IS ELIJAH has seen:

• 400% increase in DTC revenue
• 50% year-over-year B2B international growth in 2024
• 46% increase in AOV during Black Friday and Cyber Monday

The challenge: Expensive customization hampered expansion plans

Although WHO IS ELIJAH has always had a consumer-facing online store, the brand was largely built on their wholesale business. But as the number of wholesale customers buying from the brand grew into the hundreds, the existing Salesforce-based business-to-business (B2B) online buying portal started to become overly expensive and cumbersome to use.

One particular challenge was the inability for WHO IS ELIJAH to create custom pricing catalogs for each B2B customer without costly developer input. This became especially trying when the company wanted to expand their presence internationally, where wholesale customers in different regions required tailored pricing and product offerings.

Additionally, the platform would struggle to handle the increased order volumes and the growing number of SKUs, adding pressure to an already cumbersome system.

With international expansion on the agenda and a rapidly growing direct-to-consumer (DTC) business that had gathered additional momentum during the COVID-19 pandemic, WHO IS ELIJAH faced the challenge of making their online store more suitable for other markets, with different offers for different regions and shopping carts customized for individual countries.

The solution: Expansion stores and B2B on Shopify power global ambitions

Working with their developer partner, Jaboo Media, WHO IS ELIJAH upgraded to the Shopify Plus plan in 2022, simultaneously migrating their online B2B portal from Salesforce to Shopify. Using the Plus tier’s expansion store capabilities, the business launched new online DTC stores in the UK, the US, and New Zealand, in addition to their store in Australia.

Shopify gave WHO IS ELIJAH the ability to launch and price products differently in different markets, according to local requirements, such as individual state taxes in the US. They were able to tailor each site to its respective regional customer base with customized messaging and create custom carts suited to particular countries, all while still being able to gain easy oversight of sales and customer information via Shopify’s unified back-end dashboard.

At the same time, the brand used expansion stores to launch dedicated B2B online stores in Australia and the international markets into which they had launched their DTC stores, bringing their total number of expansion stores to eight. Using B2B on Shopify, WHO IS ELIJAH was able to give their Australian and international B2B customers customized catalog prices depending on their individual needs and status. All of these things could be achieved without extensive developer input.

Additionally, WHO IS ELIJAH made use of Shopify Launchpad to launch products online in different countries at different times—a common requirement, given each country’s various rules and laws around releasing new items for sale, especially in the fragrances category, which often requires regulatory oversight. The brand also uses Shopify’s Checkout Extensibility to customize their online checkout for particular events, such as Black Friday.

For instance, the brand utilized Checkout Extensibility to customize the customer cart with a two-tiered gift-with-purchase threshold so that if customers spend over a certain amount of money they are offered a free bottle of scent, automatically added to their cart. If they spend a larger amount, they are offered something else of greater value.

WHO IS ELIJAH has also tapped Shopify Bundles during sales periods such as Black Friday, introducing a 'Build Your Own Bundle' feature. This allowed customers to mix and match any 10ml products, bringing maximum value for customers and eliminating the need to create new SKUs for the brand. Meanwhile, they have also used Shopify Capital to maintain cash flow and inventory.

The results: A resilient platform, customized for maximum conversion

Using expansion stores on the Shopify Plus tier to better localize pricing, product, and user experience in other countries, WHO IS ELIJAH has increased their engagement with international markets, helping to drive international DTC sales revenue by 400% from $2 million in 2022 to $10 million in 2024, while also accelerating new customer growth.

With B2B on Shopify being used in four of WHO IS ELIJAH’s expansion stores, three of which are dedicated to international markets, the brand has seen a 50% year-over-year growth in B2B operations overseas, driven by the platform’s ability to handle regional customizations seamlessly. The automation of custom pricing and improved platform stability made it easy for the company to provide their business customers with a personalized and appropriate buying portal experience.

Thanks to Shopify, WHO IS ELIJAH has been able to make the most of peak sales periods such as Black Friday. For instance, the brand has used Shopify Bundles to easily create special Black Friday offers for customers and Checkout Extensibility for tiered gift-with-purchase rules, helping to increase average order volume by 46%, from $86 before the sale to $126 during the sale period.

Best of all, Shopify has given WHO IS ELIJAH the confidence to go big during peak sales events like Black Friday, with the platform easily able to handle the rapid influx of traffic and transactions such sales seasons bring with them.

Now, WHO IS ELIJAH are looking at how to incorporate some of Shopify’s latest artificial intelligence (AI)-powered tools, such as Shopify Sidekick, to achieve an incremental improvement of processes to make the brand’s business perform as best as it can.