Twelve years ago, a group of five guys had an idea over pizza and beers. They had all been contracted to do technical commerce platform work at New Balance and wanted to create an agency that focused exclusively on commerce-enabled digital transformations. From that idea, Red Van was born.
“That [conversation] turned into… a company called, at the time, Red Van Workshop,” says Harvey Bierman, chief executive officer at Red Van. “‘Workshop’ was a really important part of that name because it showed our nature as builders—all technologists. [We were] very hard and heavy into the code that was running and managing the ecommerce platforms.”
While they’ve since shortened the name, that builder nature still stands. They’ve stayed true to their mission, continuing to work with New Balance alongside other major brands like Patagonia and, as Harvey puts it, “a small golf company called TaylorMade.”
Despite working as an agency for 12 years, Red Van’s partnership with Shopify is relatively new. Launched in 2024 to support clients as they moved to Shopify, the partnership has expanded Red Van’s reach. Notably, it’s led to opportunities in the automotive industry including projects with CarBahn, a high-performance auto parts brand.
As a Shopify partner, Red Van has achieved results such as:
- 300% increase in organic traffic for CarBahn
- 3x sales on a month-to-month basis for CarBahn
- Ability to extend into new industries while retaining existing business
Read on to learn more, or watch the full interview here.
The challenge: Go where your clients go
In 2023, Red Van recognized that the digital commerce market was shifting—clients were making platform changes within their commerce stack and, overwhelmingly, those clients were moving to Shopify.
“Those platform changes made a tremendous amount of sense for those customers,” says Harvey. “We had to look ourselves in the mirror and say, ‘Why are we losing our customers?’ They're not leaving us. They would actually rather stay with us, if only we had a practice to support them.”
Clients looked to change platforms for a host of reasons. One was that their previous platform wasn’t providing them with a path to simplicity without a significant cost burden. They still wanted to be able to customize certain experiences, but without the hassle of building differentiated journeys for areas like checkout, abandon cart, and live chat.
Others were feeling weighed down by legacy B2B ways of working. They struggled with the outdated dealer services business model, which relied on online catalogs filled with line drawings and part numbers. Over the years, they had added various payment processing and shipping solutions, leading to a disjointed experience.
“You can almost see each of the different interactions that you're having, as if you're moving from server to server across the internet,” says Harvey. With buyer expectations shifting to more modern shopping experiences, the current model wasn’t cutting it.
Red Van saw how Shopify offered direct solutions to these challenges, and from there the partnership took off.
“You really need to meet the customer where they are. And the best way to, in essence, leapfrog a whole bunch of years of legacy technology decisions related to commerce is as a Shopify decision.”
—Harvey Bierman, Chief Executive Officer, Red Van
The solution: Create seamless experiences that fuel customer trust
Partnering with Shopify opened Red Van up to a host of new opportunities, including working with brands in the automotive industry. One of the most recent of these brands was CarBahn.
Founded by Steve Dinan, CarBahn is the leading producer of BMW, Audi, and Mercedes performance tuning software and high-performance parts. It’s not uncommon for their customers to make a purchase in the range of hundreds, if not thousands of dollars. When operating at that level, experiences are all about building customer trust.
“I've heard the CMO of CarBahn say that their average customer comes to their website 20 times before actually making a purchase,” says Harvey. “It’s recognizing that it's not a one and done. This is a long-term relationship. It's an emotional connection, and it's one that has to be based on trust.”
With that in mind, Red Van got to work making sure CarBahn could replace deficits in their customer experience with a journey that was completely seamless. Some of the new features in their digital storefront include:
- Well-organized product display pages (PDPs): CarBahn’s pages include fast-loading images alongside a smooth information hierarchy about the fit, warranty, and installation.
- A custom fitment checker: Customers can easily find products that fit their specific cars using the year, make, and model.
- Convenient checkout: At checkout, customers have a variety of payment methods, including Shop Pay, that add to the trust that comes with CarBahn building a relationship with their customers and recognizing their cart.
- A unified store locator: CarBahn traded a clunky store locator for 80 unique pages that support their own locations for installations, as well as dealer locations for their partners that offer added services.
- Native live chat: Unlike a live chat that feels like a third-party integration, CarBahn’s live chat has native functionality. If chats call attention to content on the site that may lead to a trust problem, they’re directed straight to the CMO to update within minutes.
Red Van feels CarBahn’s success is mutual. As a result of the migration, CarBahn is up 300% in organic traffic and has tripled sales on a month-to-month basis.
“Shopify made a ton of sense for [CarBahn]. We were able to do it well. We were able to do it fast. And what's really great about going fast sometimes is you can get quick wins… For CarBahn specifically, being able to see such dramatic results quickly after launch gives that business license to turn and say, ‘Okay, let's invest more.’”
—Harvey Bierman, Chief Executive Officer, Red Van
Hear more about how Red Van transformed CarBahn’s commerce experience on Shopify
The results: Grow into emerging enterprise opportunities
Red Van’s partnership with Shopify signaled a shift for the agency: While their brand identity used to be based on the platforms they worked with, they’ve now focused the company around the vision of making commerce even better.
As part of that vision, they’ve enjoyed the position of “not saying no anymore.” Instead of watching clients go in another direction in their move to Shopify, Red Van has been able to add new growth opportunities on top of sustaining and maintaining their existing business.
They’ve found these opportunities in industries like apparel, home goods, and sporting goods—both with brands already on Shopify that Red Van can reconnect with and others on platforms that have had the opportunity to move to Shopify.
They’ve also added SEO and site performance services as a way to expand how they’re able to build trust and confidence with their customers in the long term. To keep their tech teams energized, Red Van has allowed them to get much deeper into the platform, leaning heavily into engagement, recommendations, and certifications.
Looking ahead, Red Van has their sights set on the enterprise space. “It's going to be a really dynamic market for agencies over the next couple of years,” says Harvey. Specifically, this means helping large enterprise businesses unify their commerce at scale. Whether it be on TikTok, their website, point of sale, an event, or in conversation with a sales rep, Red Van sees a world in which all of those channels can have the same business logic, servers, and databases. And by partnering with Shopify, they’re poised to make it happen.
“It'll be really interesting to watch as [the Shopify ecosystem] evolves, especially as the enterprise businesses come further into the Shopify space and look for trusted partners—partners that have done work for other brands of their size, yet maintain that entrepreneurial, nimble spirit that the smaller agencies create. Finding that right mix is going to be really fun and interesting for us.”
—Harvey Bierman, Chief Executive Officer, Red Van
Watch the entire interview
Watch the full interview with Harvey Bierman, chief executive officer of the commerce agency Red Van, about becoming a Shopify partner and working with brands in the automotive industry.
