TYLER’S Tees Up Success and Tampers Down Fraud

Welcome to “TYLER’S”

Tyler, Texas. Known to some as the Rose Capital of the World and to others as home to the “Tyler Rose” himself, legendary Heisman Trophy winner and NFL running back Earl Campbell. But those aren’t the only great things that the city is known for.

In 1978, Racquet and Jog opened its doors to sell running shoes and to string tennis racquets for citizens in the local community. Now, some 40+ years later, Racquet and Jog is still serving that same community and has expanded into five more Texas cities and seven stores, proudly donning the name TYLER’S. You can find the stores in Austin (3), Dallas, Fort Worth, Southlake and The Woodlands. These stores, including the online webstore, are sought out for the company’s athletic and lifestyle apparel and accessories, including the highly-popular TYLER’S tees.

BigCommerce changes the game

As told to BigCommerce by Justin Dermit, Director of Ecommerce, TYLER’S.

Prior to BigCommerce, we were on Magento 1. Over time we discovered the platform came with a lot of overhead and upkeep. Having such a lean team running things, it just wasn’t conducive to how we needed or wanted to do business. When it came to the functionality and flexibility of Magento it seemed like, for everything we wanted to do, we had to buy a plugin to make it happen. That gets expensive over time.

We needed a platform that would give us a greater ability to market to our customers, improve the customer experience and not tax our team with time-consuming repairs to system processes.

It was a game changer when BigCommerce came around because it handled a lot of issues we were having problems with. We got a robust platform and we got what felt like a much needed expansion to our team. Not only did BigCommerce work directly with us, the team was free-flowing with a world of insights into the larger landscape of ecommerce. They played a huge role in guiding and teaching us and have bolstered the team we have here, which has really gotten us to the next level.

Reaching the breaking point

As told by Justin Dermit, Director of Ecommerce, TYLER’S.

BigCommerce helped us understand things like how to manage our workflows to vendors that would be good to partner with, like Bolt.

Up until we migrated to BigCommerce we’d been experiencing poor performance from our fraud prevention software. We started to see an increase in fraud and it kept getting worse. We literally found ourselves spending more time trying to manage fraud than growing the business. And, on top of that, we were doing a better job catching fraud than the software.

The breaking point came when we discovered the software was approving fraudulent transactions and we weren’t catching them until after they shipped.

So, now we’re out the credit card processing fee, the product we just shipped, the shipping cost incurred, and we had to refund the money back to the customer of the original account and then get hit again with another credit card transaction fee. When you mount the cost, it was considerable. We needed to make a change.

Using a Bolt to set fraud on fire

As told to BigCommerce by Justin Dermit, Director of Ecommerce, TYLER’S.

Todd, our BigCommerce account manager, suggested Bolt, which we ultimately chose and it did not disappoint. Bolt delivered the whole package — the checkout experience, the fraud prevention, secure payments and a more streamlined back end — as well as order confirmation pages, text messaging and customer product tracking.

We wanted the customers’ checkout experience to be intuitive, engaging and as easy as possible, and we got that with Bolt. We also wanted to avoid spending countless hours each day managing fraud — we got that with Bolt as well.

Bolt frees us up to serve more customers and focus on more strategic initiatives to grow the business — and that’s what it’s all about.

BigCommerce and Bolt have been absolutely phenomenal for TYLER’S. Together the two solutions are helping us get our conversion rate up while keeping the fraud rate down. We rely on Bolt’s decisioning probably about 99.9% of the time. We trust the software. Going with them is one of the best decisions that we’ve made as a business.

Apps that get the job done

As told by Justin Dermit, Director of Ecommerce, TYLER’S.

We're using several apps that make shopping on our website a well thought out and engaging experience for our customers.

Shogun Page Builder allows us to create attractive, easy-to-navigate web pages using drag and drop functionality.

We use Klaviyo for email marketing. Switching to them has been huge in helping us enhance our overall customer experience. As soon as we flipped the switch we started seeing more engagement, and we were able to build segments and track all sorts of data. Kalviyo is helping us understand our customer base a lot better.

We also use ShipStation. It’s a solid staple that helps us manage, ship and track orders.

Connected and committed to the community

As told by Justin Dermit, Director of Ecommerce, TYLER’S.

BigCommerce has helped our small team do more with less and has given us a greater ability to market to our customers.

We enjoy getting to know our customers and them getting to know us. If it’s not in our stores, our second favorite meeting place is Facebook. Customers engage with us quite a bit there. And, thanks to BigCommerce, we have the capability to publish and sell all of our products directly on Facebook. This enables us to have a Facebook Shop where we can create a variety of Facebook and Instagram ads in a place where our customers are already interacting with us.

Although it is essential to the business, not everything we do is to make the sale. Our stores support schools and organizations in their communities through a variety of fundraising events. One such event we’ve organized for the last 10 years is TYLER'S Dam That Cancer. It’s a 21-mile paddle boarding fundraiser to raise money for the Flatwater Foundation to provide mental health therapy and family support for those diagnosed with cancer. This year, 2020, our goal was to raise $750,000. We helped to raise nearly $840,000 for the foundation! At TYLER’S, we’ll keep making a difference for our customers and the community.