DRAFT: Liberated Brands | Boardriders

Platform

Shopify Plus

SERVICES

AI & Personalisation, Analytics Implementation, Applications & Extensions, Creative, Data, Data Driven UX & UI, Mobile / Desktop, Platform Implementation, Search, SEO Migration, Subscriptions & Loyalty, Systems Architecture, Technology

Liberated Brands is a global leader in the sport, outdoor and lifestyle apparel industry, boasting a 30-year history of connecting with consumers through a relentless focus on brand cultivation, sports marketing and immersive storytelling.

Overdose Australia partnered with Liberated Brands to migrate eight of their websites — including Surf Dive N Ski(SDS), Amazon Surf(AMS), RVCA, Billabong, Roxy, Quiksilver, DC Shoes and Element Skateboards — from Salesforce to Shopify Plus. This ambitious project involved redesigning the Surf Dive N Ski and Amazon Surf websites and implementing custom integrations across all sites. By leveraging the platforms of our top tier partners, Searchspring, Dotdigital, and Yotpo, we ensured the seamless operation of essential business models such as customer loyalty programs, onsite experiences and rewards, creating a unified omnichannel presence. This collaboration delivered a scalable and customer-centric ecommerce solution tailored to meet the needs of both in-store and online shoppers.

Integrations

As part of this transformative project, Overdose integrated Shopify with Liberated Brands' SAP ERP system, enabling seamless synchronisation of product, order, pricing, fulfilment, and inventory data across all eight websites. This integration ensures a consistent and efficient operational workflow while enhancing the accuracy and reliability of data across the ecommerce ecosystem.

Custom integrations were developed to connect Yotpo with in-store POS systems, allowing customers to redeem loyalty rewards and offers across both online and physical channels. This omnichannel capability strengthens customer engagement and unifies the shopping experience. Additional integrations included Searchspring, powering advanced search, merchandising, and filtering capabilities via its API; Matrixify for streamlined data management, including imports, exports, and tagging; and Riskified for robust fraud prevention. We also integrated Loop for seamless returns management, Datajet for efficient fulfilment processes, and Shopify Flow to enable automated workflows and publishing rules, delivering a comprehensive and future-ready solution for Liberated Brands.

Challenge

CHALLENGE #001

Retirement of Thousands of Legacy Products Puts SEO Rankings at Risk

The transition to the new platform involved retiring thousands of legacy products, leaving the new site with only one-third of the total URLs. This posed a significant risk to SEO rankings and traffic to product pages, with no "real" solution to mitigate potential traffic declines.

SOLUTION

Overdose implemented creative workarounds to enhance conversion rates (CVR), ensuring revenue remained stable despite a drop in sessions. Additionally, best-practice SEO improvements, such as server-side rendering (SSR), were applied to stabilise revenue. For Mono Brands like RVCA, Roxy, Billabong, and Quiksilver, managed by another agency, Overdose built an app installed on the sites’ master themes, enabling SSR without requiring code changes.

CHALLENGE #002

Timeline Constraints

Migrating eight websites to Shopify within four months, ahead of peak season and the expiry of the SFCC licence, created significant time pressures.

SOLUTION

Overdose prioritised high-impact SEO tasks early in the project, laying out a roadmap for addressing technical debt post-launch. While this approach deferred some best-practice implementations, it ensured revenue, sessions, and clicks were preserved during the migration.

CHALLENGE #003

Inheriting Code

To meet the tight timeline, Overdose inherited the codebase from the US team and focused on integrations and data manipulation for the initial four Mono Brands. The suboptimal dev stack posed challenges in prioritising fixes and accelerating implementation.

SOLUTION

Overdose collaborated extensively with partners like Yotpo and Searchspring, ensuring efficient alignment and communication. Significant effort was also dedicated to refining product data, mapping, and manipulation to ensure accurate display and optimisation across sites.

CHALLENGE #004

Searchspring API, Inherited Code and Product Data

Inherited code and incomplete product data led to difficulties in implementing Searchspring’s API for Surf Dive N Ski and Amazon Surf. The new search design, based on CRO best practices, faced critical blockers, such as irrelevant search results and slow load times.

SOLUTION

Overdose re-wrote custom code and collaborated closely with Searchspring to resolve key issues. Additionally, the team cleaned up and optimised key product categories to deliver more relevant and adaptive search results. These efforts delayed the SDS site launch by two weeks but were crucial in achieving the desired functionality and user experience.

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Alicia Watkinson
Digital Director
LIBERATED BRANDS