From AI to social media, the landscape of ecommerce is changing rapidly. It’s also growing rapidly. The market hit 5.8 trillion USD in 2023 and is predicted to soar to past 8 trillion by 2027. This is good news for innovative brands and ambitious business founders, offering huge opportunities for those who can catch the wave, but that’s not always a simple task in a competitive market. However, as with everything in business, there’s a framework for success out there if you look closely enough.
While researching new business tools to offer our customers I studied the top ecommerce unicorn company websites. I wanted to see trends in action and to understand why some online retailers rise to the top of the pack.
There was much to learn. Ecommerce is thriving, but low barriers of entry and huge profit potential make for an exceptionally competitive market.
Here are some powerful, and in some cases unique, strategies from three of my favorite ecommerce unicorns. These operators exemplify the wider trends that you can try right now, with their own twists that make these retail giants such potent online brands.
SHEIN: Valued at $66BN
Chinese-founded, Singapore-based SHEIN started life as a humble drop shipping business but evolved into a billion-dollar startup quicker than you can say fashionista. SHEIN saw incredible growth during the pandemic years as its sales exploded from $4B in 2019 to $23BN in 2022. As of 2024, SHEIN is still growing, and currently valued at $66BN.
What impressed me about SHEIN was how this ecommerce giant has integrated a frictionless shopping experience with an effective customer contact data capture strategy. The result is an incentivized shopping experience that creates long-term loyalty in its user base.
It’s a longstanding principle across both B2B and B2C that retaining customers is cheaper than acquiring new ones — between five and 25 times cheaper. However, to reach a unicorn valuation you need the kind of growth that demands a constant stream of new customers.
To achieve this, SHEIN has optimized a frictionless first sale. They offer 20% off the first order and advertise free shipping and free returns. It’s an enticing, risk-free proposition.
For many businesses, this kind of customer acquisition push might distract from retention. I know I’ve struggled to balance the two in the past. But not so with SHEIN. Once the first sale has been achieved, SHEIN then goes all-in on the creation of loyalty incentives. The SHEIN CLUB loyalty program is an Amazon Prime for fashion retail, offering exclusive products and discounts, and push notification marketing through SHEIN’s app, Facebook Messenger chat service, and email capture program work to create a constant line of communication.
As our customer base grows at Atom it presents a big opportunity for customer capture, and I’m not afraid to admit we were struggling to optimize our processes before I explored SHEIN’s site. Their omnichannel customer capture personalizes communication, making every SHEIN shopper feel unique and valued every step of the way. This is huge for a brand whose focus is on a Gen Z market — communication is digitally integrated to match the lifestyle of their target market.
Inspired by SHEIN, email capture is going to become a part of several valuable, free tools we’re in the midst of creating, and we’ve also stepped up our one-on-one telephone communication to make every customer feel included.
SHEIN’s seamless shopping experience is on-brand for an online retailer that has a fast-paced turnover of trends at the heart of its brand positioning. By sheer volume of products launched, SHEIN massively outpaces its competitors, listing between 500 and 2000 new products online every day, and the average design-to-launch track takes just three days.
The overall effect creates a shopping experience that appeals to their target market — Gen Z consumers. The product range moves fast because it has to keep up with customers’ fluctuating individual identities in an algorithm-fueled online environment.
SHEIN: Key Takeaways
Having browsed SHEIN’s website, I’m not surprised they top almost every list of ecommerce unicorns. The site is optimized to create customers and keep them coming back.
- Create a frictionless first sale.
- Prioritize customer capture across multiple channels of comms.
- Quantity is quality: SHEIN knows its audience and caters to individuality.
Fanatics Inc: Valued at $31BN
Jacksonville-founded sports apparel retailer Fanatics Inc., valued at $31BN, has hit a home run in brand positioning. Even the business name offers an instant connection to the loyalty and identity at the core of its customers’ motivations.
By fully integrating ecommerce sales into the team sports experience, Fanatics has done something very clever. They hitch their wagon onto the pre-existing fan loyalties to global sports teams, connecting powerful, even generational, loyalty to their own platform.
And they connect the shopping experience to the sporting experience: An optimized mobile site puts sports apparel at fans’ fingertips and captures sales at emotive points. Because of this, mobile sales account for over 80% of all sales, many of which happen during big game moments like crucial touchdowns and electrifying solo plays. Customers are inspired to shop from the sidelines.
Loyalty is at the heart of Fanatics’ brand positioning. The customer journey begins by connecting your account to the team you love. Sports language has been integrated throughout the site, and becoming a Fanatics MVP (an initialism that stands for Most Valued Player, the highest accolade in a sport) unlocks special offers and discounts.
The consistent and personalized approach to branding — every user’s experience is tailored to their own sports team — has inspired several new features at Atom. We are improving our search function to tailor it to personal needs and perfecting shortlisting to make everyone’s marketplace experience unique.
Of course, Fanatics use a few tricks of the ecommerce trade, too. The creation of scarcity and time sensitivity throughout the sales process, for example, along with an impressive 365-day returns policy, encourage customer sales. Regardless of the strength of your brand positioning, you can’t afford to ignore psychology or good customer service.
Fanatics’ vertically integrated model of production and distribution and innovative approach to cloud commerce have contributed to their growth into a billion-dollar brand. But no startup can find success without a brand positioning that connects with their customers, or in the case of this ecommerce unicorn, their fans.
Fanatics: Key Takeaways
The Fanatics brand-building project impressed me. It’s clear, coherent, and consistent through every step of the customer journey.
- Leverage loyalty any way you can get it.
- Build a powerful brand tied to your customers’ identity.
- Capture sales at the right moment, through the right channels.
Gopuff: Valued at $15BN
As we’ve seen in SHEIN and Fanatics, customer loyalty is built through effective sales tools and powerful brand positioning. Gopuff, a $15B consumer goods and delivery platform, provides a lesson in how an optimized UI (user interface) can replicate and improve upon a recognizable IRL shopping experience, to compete with traditional services.
The Gopuff browsing experience is fluid and visually rich. The online store is easily navigable and initiates a shopping experience with “Cart Starters”, essential items shoppers are almost always in need of, and can hardly resist clicking on. The whole UI is designed to facilitate browsing and, whether you come armed with a shopping list or not, you can expect your cart to fill up quickly.
Gopuff’s smart shopping bundles replace and upgrade traditional “seasonal aisles”. Categories such as ‘Big Game Ready’ and ‘Time to Grill’ pool together products that would be widely dispersed in a physical grocery store, enabling customers to find what they need, faster, as well as providing an innovative form of upselling. Gopuff partnered with ecommerce machine learning company Rokt, making it highly likely that AI is behind these incredibly effective categories.
Lastly, the highlighted delivery time, provided through location monitoring services, reassures customers of the speed of delivery.
Taken together, we can see how Gopuff places speed and selection at the heart of its brand positioning, which it has been able to do by building a vertical model of delivery. Unlike competitors such as Instacart and Uber Eats which rely on local stores or restaurants, and often experience stocklist problems as a result, Gopuff has its own stock and a product range that allows a complete browsing experience.
All together, these are powerful motivators for the hungry shopper. We’re all familiar with the experience of shopping on an empty stomach, and the way products accumulate in our basket when we do so. Gopuff creates and leverages desire through an intuitive and creative user interface.
What’s clear from exploring Gopuff’s business model is that hunger in all its forms is what ecommerce businesses need to create in their audience. If you can identify user needs and pain points in traditional services and provide a targeted solution, your customers will thank you.
Gopuff Key Takeaways
At Atom, we’ve always valued technological innovation and, when used effectively, AI is currently at the forefront of this. Gopuff’s smart categories show that every ecommerce business stands to gain from correct implementation.
- Create a shopping experience that matches audience expectations.
- Think laterally along the shopping experience to upsell related products in every direction.
- If you want to explode, examine your supply chain.
Wrapping Up
To reach unicorn status, you have to look at the big picture: from design and manufacture to the final sale, vertical integration optimizes unit economics. SHEIN and Fanatics design and produce their merchandise, and Gopuff holds its own stock (including its own Basically brand).
But even if a billion-dollar valuation feels out of reach, you can still learn from these ecommerce titans. Inspire urgency in your customers, provide a frictionless first sale, and prioritize customer capture to generate ongoing sales.
Crucially, like SHEIN, Gopuff, and Fanatics, you must do all this while staying on-brand. Use website design and optimized mobile pages to bolster your branding, so customers have a retail experience that matches not only their needs, but their identity.