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When Australian entrepreneurs and best friends Natasha Oakley and Devin Brugman created their blog, A Bikini a Day, in 2012, they had no idea their passion project would eventually turn into a multimillion-dollar global brand.
Inspired by the success of their blog and a gap in the swimwear market, the duo launched Monday Swimwear in 2014. Monday’s swimsuits celebrate curves and the diversity of women’s bodies. The line also provides women with larger cup sizes with options that are both sexy and supportive, which is traditionally difficult to find in the swimwear space.
Fast-forward to 2023 and Monday Swimwear has become one of the leading direct to consumer (DTC) swimwear brands, growing its revenue exponentially year over year and selling to millions internationally via its Shopify site.
To engage with its growing community and introduce more people to the brand, Monday Swimwear partnered with Shopify to run its first ever month-long pop-up shop at The Grove, an iconic Los Angeles shopping destination. Customers could book appointments with fit specialists—Monday’s sales associates—to find the best swimwear for their bodies.
Anticipating heavy foot traffic, Monday Swimwear equipped its pop up with Shopify mobile POS terminal, POS Go, to ensure staff could offer shoppers a quick and seamless checkout experience, which resulted in:
- 60% of sales coming from new customers
- An 8% higher spend from new customers
- A 3.5x increase in social media impressions for pop-up related content
Challenge
Monday Swimwear’s LA pop-up was popular from day one, according to Director of Operations Ahna Tillmanns. “I couldn’t believe the foot traffic. It was nonstop from the time that we opened the doors until we closed up at night. It was just really busy all the time,” she says.
Nonstop foot traffic is a retailer’s dream, but it posed a challenge for Monday because of space limitations. “We needed a small POS system because with the pop-up footprint being so small and not having a dedicated checkout space, we couldn’t have a full computer set up,” Ahna says.
If fit specialists couldn’t checkout customers quickly, congestion would keep new shoppers away. Monday needed a portable POS system that could move customers outside of the shop and speed up checkout.
Our pop up was going to be a lot of shoppers’ first ever interaction with Monday Swimwear. It was essential that our POS system help provide a polished experience to shoppers. It needed to be portable, sync with our inventory, and capable of handling a full day of use.
Solution
To meet their needs, Monday equipped fit specialists with POS Go, Shopify’s handheld POS terminal. Complete with a built-in card reader, barcode scanner, and integrated POS software, POS Go allowed Monday Swimwear’s fit specialists to check stock availability and ring up sales all day.
“We set up a small desk outside of the shop and assigned a Fit Specialist there with a POS Go terminal,” Ahna explains”. “It was a great way to get people out of the really small pop-up space once they were done shopping, and bring them outside to clear that floor space for other browsing customers.”
Besides improving the shopping experience for customers, POS Go also made it easier for fit specialists, who were hired for the pop-up and new to the brand, to excel in their roles. “None of the ladies who were working with us are full-time Monday employees,” Ahna explains. “We had to give them a crash course on everything. POS Go was intuitive for them to learn in a really short period of time. Getting everybody up to speed was pretty easy.”
POS Go also enabled Fit Specialists assigned to the fitting room to check inventory availability fast. “The ability to look up inventory really helped the flow of our customer experience,” Ahna explains. “It saved Fit Specialists from having to run back and forth between the shop and the stockroom to check if a swimsuit was available. They just looked up inventory on-hand on POS Go and saw which models, colors, sizes were available for sale.”
POS Go is a really flexible device. We used it for checkout and for our customer service. It was really well suited for our needs for this pop-up.
Results
While Monday’s team expected the pop-up would attract customers who were already familiar with the brand, they couldn’t have predicted that 60% of sales would come from new customers. “We had a large number of new customers. Out of all the transactions processed at our pop up, the majority new to the brand, which is a testament to how great in-person experiences are for net-new acquisition.”
Not only were the majority of pop-up sales from new customers, but these new customers also ended up spending 8% more than existing customers. “A lot of our existing customers might have just been coming in looking for one thing because they have a bunch of our products already, whereas those new customers were coming in and not just buying one thing, they were literally just starting their Monday addiction,” Ahna says.
Monday has already been seeing this swimwear addiction play out in the weeks after the pop-up closed. “We have some customers that have made second, third, and even fourth purchases from us after buying for the first time at the pop-up,” Ahna says. “We’re retaining the customers we gained through the pop-up, and that relationship is continuing online.”
Beyond success at the pop-up, Monday Swimwear also surpassed expectations for social media promotion of the shop. “We made a series of videos in the pop-up that explained fit, measuring, and styles. On average we probably get 40,000 views on our reels. Most of the pop-up reels got between 180,000 and 200,000 views.”
If you’re already on Shopify, POS Go is probably the easiest way for you to serve customers and accept payments in-person. It provides so much information and functionality in that small package. POS Go is definitely worthwhile for any brand looking to open a pop up and offer shoppers a really modern experience.
