In the competitive landscape of direct-to-consumer (D2C) e-commerce, digital infrastructure can often make or break a brand. For UK- and Netherlands-based personal care brand grüum, choosing the right technological foundation has been pivotal to its sustained growth. Operating out of Stockport, where it manufactures its entire range of skincare, haircare, bodycare, and shaving goods in-house, grüum handles up to 80,000 monthly orders across roughly 300 stock-keeping units (SKUs).
Despite processing a massive volume of transactions—including complex single-item purchases, custom bundles, and high-retention subscription models—the company maintains its entire digital storefront with just one full-time developer and a part-time QA tester.
After conducting an exhaustive four-month platform evaluation in 2023 to determine whether its existing e-commerce setup could support future scaling, grüum reaffirmed its commitment to WooCommerce. Rejecting enterprise alternatives like Adobe Commerce (Magento) and Shopify Plus, the brand proved that an open-source model could offer the customizability, financial predictability, and data ownership required to fuel rapid international expansion without inflating operational overhead.
Chronology: From a Shared Vision to an E-Commerce Powerhouse
2016: The Genesis of grüum
The story of grüum began in January 2016, when industry colleagues Simon Leonard, Andy Shaw, Bethanie Sleigh, and George Lagonikas walked away from their conventional corporate jobs to forge a new path in the consumer goods space. Operating across the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, the founders pooled their expertise to launch grüum in September 2016 with a modest lineup of approximately 10 products. Initially, the brand focused squarely on male skincare and shaving.
Expanding Horizons and Sustainable Manufacturing
As consumer demands shifted toward transparency and eco-friendly alternatives, grüum evolved rapidly. The brand expanded its product catalog well beyond men’s grooming to encompass inclusive skincare, haircare, bodycare, and shaving essentials suitable for all ages and genders. Central to this expansion was a commitment to sustainability: utilizing minimalist cardboard packaging, waterless formulations, and natural ingredients.
Unlike many competitors who outsource production, grüum hired cosmetic scientists in-house. This strategic decision eliminated reliance on third-party contract manufacturers, enabling lightning-fast formulation iteration, rigorous quality control, and a localized production cycle based in Stockport, UK. Among their many successful offerings, an eco-friendly shampoo bar emerged as the runaway bestseller, moving millions of units worldwide.
2023: The Platform Stress-Test
By 2023, grüum was processing up to 80,000 orders per month, managing complex inventory demands with a lean technical team. Recognizing that the brand was approaching a critical inflection point, leadership initiated a comprehensive four-month evaluation of their e-commerce architecture. They needed to know whether WooCommerce could reliably scale with their ambitious growth roadmap, or if migrating to a different enterprise-grade platform was necessary. Following deep financial and technical analysis, the leadership team chose to stay put—a decision that unlocked long-term operational efficiency.
Supporting Data and Technical Architecture
Managing roughly 300 SKUs while offering flexible customer pathways—such as one-off purchases, custom product bundles, and recurring subscriptions—requires a sophisticated yet flexible technical framework.
According to co-founder Bethanie Sleigh, grüum’s catalog features unique product structures. "We have lots of strange ways we set products up," Sleigh notes. For instance, the brand’s custom bundles manage contents, pricing, and stock levels as a single configurable unit. Customers can purchase a pre-set soap set, append additional items to the cart, and simultaneously subscribe to individual items to maximize long-term savings.
The Financial Reality of Platform Fees
The platform evaluation revealed stark differences in operational expenses, particularly regarding subscription models. Subscriptions currently account for 10% of grüum’s total revenue, with an impressive average subscriber retention span of 30 months.
When evaluating Shopify Plus, co-founder Simon Leonard ran the calculations on platform transaction fees levied against recurring revenue.
"When you’re doing £1 million or £10 million through subscriptions, that soon adds up," Leonard explained. "You’re instantly shelling out £100,000 a year."
By contrast, WooCommerce Subscriptions operates on a flat-fee model. This structural difference generated massive cost savings at grüum’s enterprise scale. Coupled with WooPayments for native payment processing, the brand eliminated predatory revenue-share percentages, protecting its profit margins.
Lean Human Capital and Rapid Deployment
Efficiency was not purely financial; it was also temporal. grüum’s Chief Technology Officer estimated that complex technical tasks that previously would have taken an entire year to execute could be completed within a single month using WooCommerce.
This agility is maintained by a remarkably lean digital team:
1 Full-Time Developer: Focused on core site performance and custom features.
1 Part-Time QA Tester: Ensuring stability across updates.
A Content Team: Empowered to manage daily operations entirely independently.
Utilizing WordPress publishing tools like Gutenberg for page construction, Max Mega Menu for site navigation, and Yoast for search engine optimization (SEO), the content team handles product launches, seasonal promotions, and structural updates without submitting IT tickets. Consequently, the developer’s time is dedicated entirely to high-impact customer experience improvements rather than basic site maintenance.
Official Responses and Strategic Rationale
The decision to bypass alternative enterprise solutions was born out of a desire for autonomy rather than compromise. When leadership scrutinized Adobe Commerce (formerly Magento) and Shopify Plus, clear incompatibilities emerged.
Rejecting Adobe Commerce (Magento)
Magento was the first contender to be eliminated from consideration. While Adobe Commerce offers deep enterprise-grade customization capabilities, it is fundamentally built for massive corporate environments that require substantial operational overhead. Adopting Magento would have forced grüum to build out an expensive, dedicated technical division.
"We weren’t going to employ a team of 20 people running our website," Leonard stated bluntly.
Escaping the "Box" of Shopify Plus
Similarly, Shopify Plus presented structural roadblocks. Because grüum relies on non-standard product bundling and highly specific subscription logic, trying to force their operational model onto Shopify’s rigid framework proved unviable.
"We were going to have to change our business to fit into that business," Leonard noted. "With WooCommerce, we can make WooCommerce fit around our business and make it work for us. We don’t have to change our principles."
Because WooCommerce is built on an open-source foundation, grüum is never boxed in by default platform limitations. If a unique bundling structure requires specialized conditional logic, developers can deploy an existing extension or code a bespoke solution from scratch.
Implications for the Future of D2C E-Commerce
Perhaps the most critical strategic advantage of grüum’s commitment to WooCommerce lies in data sovereignty.
In an era where many proprietary Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) e-commerce platforms gatekeeper customer metrics, restrict data exports, or lock brands into closed ecosystems, grüum maintains absolute ownership over its consumer database.
"The data is ours, which is quite different from other subscription platforms," Leonard emphasizes. "It gives us control over our customers rather than giving them to a third party."
With an average customer subscription lifetime of 30 months, grüum’s customer relationship data—comprising detailed purchase histories, skincare preferences, and seasonal buying patterns—is among its most valuable corporate assets. Surrendering control of this data pipeline to an external platform introduces severe operational vulnerability. For grüum, relying on an open-source framework ensures that the brand remains the sole custodian of its audience relationships.
Conclusion
The trajectory of grüum serves as a masterclass for modern direct-to-consumer brands scaling past the mid-market threshold. By resisting the gravitational pull of expensive, rigid SaaS platforms, the company demonstrated that open-source flexibility can harmonize with high-volume enterprise sales. Through meticulous cost control, localized in-house production, and total ownership of customer data, grüum has secured a resilient digital blueprint for sustainable global growth.
