"Want to change the world? Start by changing your underwear!" With this daring and ambitious slogan, Guillaume Gibault laid the foundation for Le Slip Français, an underwear company he founded in 2011 after a bet with his friends. He began by stocking his first 600 pieces of underwear in his grandmother's garage. However, his mission was far from a joke; he aimed to reinvent a whole industry with panache by manufacturing everything in France.
Thirteen years later, Le Slip Français has established itself as the largest French textile brand, employing over 300 people in the country. The company also sets itself apart from other ready-to-wear brands with its commitment to local production and social causes.
But this philosophy created a complex equation for the company: how to guarantee local production at an accessible price in an ultra-competitive sector? For Guillaume Gibault, whose company generates more than 60% of its turnover online, the answer lies in collaboration with the most efficient ecommerce platform on the market. After 12 years with Prestashop, Le Slip Français migrated to Shopify Plus in October 2023, and the initial results are more than encouraging.
Since migrating to Shopify Plus, Le Slip Français has:
- Had one of its products place in Shopify's International Top Trending Products just a few weeks after migration
- Supported Black Friday peaks with one order every 20 seconds while boosting conversion rate up to 5%
- Connected to The Bradery marketplace within a week
- Achieved a record 9% conversion rate during a recent offer campaign
The Challenge: Maintaining profitability without compromising on commitments
Although Le Slip Français' mission of relocating production resonated with a wide audience, Guillaume Gibault observed that consumers were ambivalent when it came to purchasing underwear. Despite increasing environmental awareness and a growing attraction toward local products, major international brands still dominated the market. Le Slip Français faced a significant challenge: how to scale up while maintaining profitability and its commitment to being made in France, all while offering prices that remained accessible to customers.
Le Slip Français decided the best solution was to refocus on what it does best, namely the production of men's underwear in France, and collaborate with the most efficient ecommerce platform on the market to achieve better commercial performance and optimize costs. The company had used Prestashop as its ecommerce solution since its launch, but after 12 years, Guillaume felt Prestashop was too limited in terms of conversion, CRM, payment, and international development. Overall, it remained too disconnected from market innovations.
My role doesn't involve constant A/B testing of a website. I can't redesign the ergonomics of a website and identify the perfect building blocks to ensure the customer journey is optimal. Shopify is a logical choice; it's the best platform to enable us to focus on our main challenge: manufacturing everything in France.
The Solution: Optimizing the digital experience with Shopify Plus
During the same period, Guillaume observed the massive migration of large ecommerce brands to Shopify. Positive feedback regarding customer experience and word of mouth about the boost in conversion rates, turnover, organic traffic, and on-site functionalities motivated him to migrate from Prestashop to Shopify Plus.
For me, Shopify is a turnkey 360 degree ecosystem. It's a no-brainer. brands aren't here to rethink the online digital experience. That's Shopify's expertise, and they excel at it.
For Le Slip Français, B2B functionality is crucial for ensuring their network of resellers can offer a sales experience as remarkable as what they provide in their own stores or ecommerce sites. With B2B on Shopify, a suite of first-party features for wholesale integrated into the Shopify admin, the brand ensured their resellers were not impacted by the migration.
The agility in catalog management, the robustness of payments and analyses, the fluidity of the back office, as well as the personalization of customer experience quickly made a positive impact as well.
To manufacture everything in France, I require the best tools. Shopify provides straightforward catalog management and excels in CRM components and conversion tools. We have something functional, which operates seamlessly from a customer perspective and that is very easy to integrate.
The Results: Sales are on the rise
Just a few weeks after the migration, Le Slip Français achieved online turnover of 1.2 million euros, representing growth of around 4%. Black Friday arrived the following week, and the company recorded a peak in its conversion rate at 5% while Marius, its iconic short, low-rise boxer shorts, rose to Shopify's Top Trending Products internationally. A few months later, during a special leap year campaign, the conversion rates of Le Slip Français reached a record level of over 9%.
In a competitive and rapidly changing industry, the ease of integration of Shopify Plus with other sites and platforms was also a major asset. Le Slip Français was able to natively connect to several marketplaces, including The Bradery —also powered by Shopify— in just one week.
