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.”