OneBlade: White Glove Onboarding

OneBlade is the razor brand crafting premium self-care products that last a

lifetime.

With SKUs ranging from their introductory $25 razor to their flagship Genesis

model, which was developed after more than 1,000 prototypes and $1 million

spent on R&D, the company relies heavily on customers returning for its

recyclable, platinum-coated Japanese steel blades, available for a refill only

through OneBlade.

We sat down with Charlie Pyles, the brand’s VP of Operations, to cover:

The growing pains and revenue loss stemming from Recharge The value (and

rarity) of a personalized software onboarding process How OneBlade’s

conversion rates nearly doubled within 3 months after switching to Skio

“At the end of the day, OneBlade is dependent on subscriptions for our long-term profitability and value as a business. So it’s critical for us to have a platform as reliable as Skio to run those subscriptions.”

Recharge: lost revenue and endless headaches

Because all OneBlade razors are designed to be a one-time purchase, complete

with a lifetime warranty, the company is largely dependent on subscription and

repeat purchase revenue through their unique blade refills, as well as on

their other grooming products like shaving cream and aftershave balm.

However, this was largely complicated by the fact that OneBlade was running

subscriptions through Recharge, which wasn’t compatible with the brand’s

Shopify engine.

As a result, Recharge’s subscription payment flow was almost completely

divorced from the rest of OneBlade’s Shopify-powered processing.

For instance, shoppers could not use Shopify discount codes if they were

purchasing a subscription, (namely discounts from OneBlade email or SMS

signup) — since Shopify discounts are not integrated with Recharge’s separate

checkout.

Another critical result of this blockage meant lost revenue and chances for conversion.

OneBlade tried using Recharge to power a free-trial promotion in March of

2021, where shoppers could try a razor for 30 days with zero down, and then

return it for free if they chose to.

The offer was built on a two-charge order system in Recharge that used a SKU

swap which, when orchestrated correctly, would charge $0 to the buyer, capture

the payment method 30 days later, as well as cancel the subscription and

second razor shipment.

However, clunky execution and processing resulted in a wave of support

requests from confused customers who saw unexpected charges.

In addition, fraudulent customers who ordered the trial with worthless debit

cards were able to scam the system and disappear with their free

razor, resulting in the loss of several tens of thousands of dollars worth of inventory before the issue was found and addressed.

OneBlade scrapped the offer after a month.

“It felt as if Recharge had grown past the point of focusing on startups and smaller companies like OneBlade. The way they operated signaled that our unique needs just wouldn’t be met.”

Finding Skio and making the switch

Their failed free-trial campaign was the final nail in the coffin that spurred

the OneBlade team to migrate away from Recharge and seek other solutions.

In Charlie’s words, although the team considered other options like

Ordergroove and Chargebee, the decision to go with Skio was due to positive

word-of-mouth from team members at Supply.

And most importantly, unlike Recharge, Skio was a small-enough platform to

cater to a startup like OneBlade, while also demonstrating strong promise of

growth and expansion.

Onboarding, migration, and personalized guidance

The actual onboarding process itself, as Charlie recalls, was streamlined and

personalized by the Skio team, who took on instrumental tasks such as:

• Building a custom discount offer on razors when customers signed up for

  blade refill at checkout required complicated backend scripts that required

  4–5 weeks of Skio's engineering at no extra cost.

• Adjusting OneBlade’s custom Shopify frontend for a cohesive branding

  experience with the Skio login and dashboard UIs.

Furthermore, while a portion of existing OneBlade subscribers had to be

migrated on an individual basis due to external payment hurdles, that

initial loss was quickly recuperated, in Charlie’s words, through growth

overall in subscribers per checkout, as driven by Skio.

“Going in, we knew we had technical needs that required extra attention to ensure things worked properly, but it wasn’t an issue since the Skio team’s focus on us — especially the founder’s — was very reassuring.”

Hard metrics: the benefits of a killer subscription tool

After getting set up and beginning to scale with Skio, Charlie can confidently

say that significant metric growth was kickstarted following the migration,

likely due to OneBlade’s new consolidated checkout experience for subscribers.

After switching to Skio and being able to maintain Shopify Checkout flows:

• OneBlade’s average monthly conversion rate doubled from 0.48% (Sept. 2021)

  to 1.27% (Dec. 2021).

• AOV increased by 49% when compared to the year prior, from $76.59 (Oct. 10 –

  Dec. 31, 2020) to $114.14 (Oct. 10 – Dec. 31, 2021)

• The percentage of all checkout orders including a subscription increased

  from 32.5% (2021 Q3) to 39.4% (2021 Q4)

• The average of $232 per day (2021 Q3) in subscription item purchases

  increased by at least 330% to $773 per day (2021 Q4)

“When you take a look at the time period where we switched to Skio alongside our growth periods in AOV, refill rates, etc. — a lot of that significant subscription growth occurred at the same time.”