By Christina Bevitori Published in partnership with Woo
Main Facts
In the rapidly evolving landscape of direct-to-consumer (DTC) e-commerce, digital brands constantly face a high-stakes crossroads: migrate to expensive enterprise monolithic platforms as they scale, or double down on flexible, open-source infrastructure. For British-Dutch personal care brand grüum, the choice was clear. Processing up to 80,000 orders a month across an intricate catalog of roughly 300 stock-keeping units (SKUs), the company evaluated its technological stack in 2023 and firmly chose to remain on WooCommerce.
Founded in September 2016 by four industry colleagues—Simon Leonard, Andy Shaw, Bethanie Sleigh, and George Lagonikas—grüum has transformed from a niche male skincare and shaving startup into a broad-market sustainable personal care powerhouse. Operating out of Stockport, UK, where they manufacture their goods in-house, the brand has scaled up dramatically while relying on a remarkably lean tech team: just one full-time developer and a part-time quality assurance (QA) tester.
By leveraging WooCommerce’s open-source architecture, grüum avoids the restrictive business models, punishing revenue-share subscription fees, and heavy technical overheads associated with platforms like Shopify Plus and Adobe Commerce (formerly Magento). For grüum, WooCommerce is not merely a shopping cart plugin; it is the fundamental operational engine driving a sustainable, data-secure, and agile business model.
Chronology: From a Shared Vision to an E-Commerce Powerhouse
The Genesis (January – September 2016)
The story of grüum began in January 2016 when co-founders Simon Leonard, Andy Shaw, Bethanie Sleigh, and George Lagonikas walked away from their respective corporate jobs. Operating across the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, the quartet shared a vision to strip back the unnecessary complications, excessive packaging, and inflated marketing hype of the traditional beauty industry.
By September 2016, they officially launched grüum with an initial lineup of roughly 10 products. At inception, the brand targeted male grooming, focusing specifically on skincare and shaving essentials.
Expansion and Formulation Mastery (2017 – 2022)
As consumer habits shifted toward eco-friendly alternatives, grüum expanded its catalog well beyond male grooming. The brand evolved to encompass comprehensive skincare, haircare, bodycare, and shaving solutions designed for all ages and genders. Crucially, grüum brought its cosmetic research and manufacturing in-house to Stockport. By employing cosmetic scientists internally rather than outsourcing to contract manufacturers, the brand gained unprecedented control over product iterations and quality control.
This period of rapid product development birthed several viral hits, most notably their multi-million-selling shampoo bar, which sits at the core of their sustainability-driven, waterless product philosophy.
The 2023 Platform Audit
By 2023, grüum’s digital storefront was operating at a massive scale, regularly processing up to 80,000 orders a month. With this volume came growing pains and strategic questions. Recognizing the need to ensure their digital infrastructure could support their long-term trajectory, the leadership team initiated a rigorous, four-month audit of their e-commerce capabilities. They actively tested and compared WooCommerce against heavyweight enterprise alternatives, including Adobe Commerce and Shopify Plus.
Ultimately, the audit reaffirmed what the founders suspected: WooCommerce offered the most adaptable, economically viable, and strategically protective environment for grüum’s unique operational needs.
Supporting Data and Operational Mechanics
Scaling a modern DTC brand requires handling complex product configurations, recurring subscriptions, and seamless user experiences without bloating operational headcount. grüum’s metrics and structural choices provide a compelling case study in operational efficiency:
Monthly Order Volume: Up to 80,000 orders processed consistently.
Catalog Complexity: Approximately 300 active SKUs, featuring single items, subscription models, and uniquely configured product bundles.
Subscription Economics: Subscriptions account for 10% of total revenue. Crucially, the average grüum subscriber maintains an active account for an impressive 30 months.
Lean Technical Team: 1 full-time developer and 1 part-time QA tester manage the entire website infrastructure.
Content Management Operations: A small, non-technical content team manages daily site updates, seasonal promotions, and page creation independently using WordPress tools such as Gutenberg, Max Mega Menu, and Yoast SEO.
Mastering Complex Bundles and Subscriptions
One of the primary challenges grüum faced when evaluating other platforms was the unique nature of their product architecture. Customers can purchase standalone products, subscribe to recurring deliveries to unlock discounts, or purchase intricate bundled sets (such as curated soap collections) while simultaneously adding standalone items to the same cart.
Co-founder Bethanie Sleigh notes the complexity: "We have lots of strange ways we set products up. Our product bundles manage the contents, the pricing, and stock management as a single configurable unit."
When testing Shopify Plus, the founders hit a brick wall. The platform’s rigid constraints demanded that grüum alter its business model to fit the software’s native limitations. Conversely, WooCommerce’s open-source flexibility allowed the brand to build workflows that adapted to their business rules.
Furthermore, financial considerations played a massive role in subscription management. Platforms like Shopify Plus often levy a percentage-based fee on subscription revenues. Co-founder Simon Leonard highlighted the staggering financial impact of this pricing model at scale:
"When you’re doing £1 million or £10 million through subscriptions, that soon adds up. You’re instantly shelling out £100,000 a year."
By utilizing WooCommerce Subscriptions—which operates on a flat-fee model—grüum achieved monumental cost savings. Combined with the native integration of WooPayments, the brand optimized its financial throughput while retaining full control over payment processing pipelines.
Official Responses and Strategic Insights
The leadership team at grüum has been remarkably vocal about why open-source e-commerce remains superior for ambitious, independent brands. Their reflections highlight the pitfalls of proprietary walled gardens and the strategic advantages of true platform ownership.
Resisting Platform Lock-In
Reflecting on the limitations discovered during their platform audit, Simon Leonard emphasized the importance of software flexibility:
"We were going to have to change our business to fit into that business. With WooCommerce, we can make WooCommerce fit around our business and make it work for us. We don’t have to change our principles."
This sentiment underscores a core philosophy at grüum: technology should serve the enterprise, not dictate its operational boundaries. Because WooCommerce is open-source, grüum is never boxed in by default feature sets. If a specialized workflow requires advanced conditional logic, developers can deploy an existing extension or code a bespoke solution from scratch.
Avoiding Enterprise Overhead
When evaluating Adobe Commerce (Magento), grüum faced a vastly different obstacle: prohibitive enterprise overhead. While Adobe Commerce offers deep customization suited for massive global conglomerates, it demands extensive technical resources to maintain stability and performance.
Leonard bluntly assessed why Magento was quickly eliminated from contention:
"We weren’t going to employ a team of 20 people running our website."
Instead, grüum’s digital ecosystem thrives on autonomy. Thanks to the intuitive nature of the WordPress block editor (Gutenberg) and mature ecosystem plugins, the brand’s non-technical content team executes updates, landing pages, and promotional rollouts without developer bottlenecks. According to grüum’s CTO, tasks that previously dragged on for a year on legacy systems could be conceptualized and deployed within a single month using WooCommerce.
Implications for the Future of DTC E-Commerce
The case of grüum offers profound implications for the broader e-commerce ecosystem, signaling a growing maturity among DTC brands regarding data ownership, platform independence, and sustainable scaling.
Data Sovereignty as a Competitive Advantage
Perhaps the most critical takeaway from grüum’s long-term commitment to WooCommerce is the issue of customer data ownership. In an era where third-party platforms increasingly gatekeeper customer relationships, proprietary algorithms, and analytics, grüum stands firm on data independence.
As Simon Leonard asserts:
"The data is ours, which is quite different from other subscription platforms. It gives us control over our customers rather than giving them to a third party."
With an average subscriber retention span of 30 months, grüum accumulates deep, highly valuable behavioral insights regarding consumer preferences, purchasing cadences, and skincare trends. By housing this data natively within their own WooCommerce database, they completely eliminate the operational risk of vendor lock-in or sudden, disruptive policy changes by third-party gatekeepers.
Proving That Lean Can Scale
For years, conventional wisdom in the venture-backed tech space dictated that scaling past tens of millions in revenue necessitated migrating to high-cost, closed-ecosystem SaaS enterprise solutions backed by sprawling technical agencies. grüum’s trajectory shatters this myth.
By pairing an environmentally conscious, vertically integrated physical product line with a lean, highly optimized open-source digital infrastructure, grüum proves that operational agility and fiscal discipline can coexist harmoniously at scale. As brands increasingly seek shelter from rising SaaS fees and rigid platform restrictions, grüum’s blueprint on WooCommerce serves as a masterclass in modern, independent digital commerce.
