Case Study: RIPT Apparel achieves $4M revenue and reliable, scalable ecommerce with Shopify Plus

How RIPT Apparel Turned $3,000 Into $4 Million Selling One T-Shirt At a Time

RIPT Apparel began as a $3,000 startup selling a single pop‑culture t-shirt design each day for 24 hours. Rapid early sales exposed operational problems: outsourced printing caused long shipping delays, a custom-coded site frequently crashed (forcing offsite checkout) and the company couldn’t automate or scale to meet growing demand.

In October 2015 RIPT migrated to Shopify Plus for its uptime, scalability, APIs and app ecosystem, building a custom integration to automate product pushes and using Klaviyo for targeted email. The platform stabilized checkout and mobile shopping, improved conversions (3.19% add‑to‑cart, 2.27% purchase), helped email generate ~30% of revenue, and supported growth to $4M+ annual revenue with about 60% repeat customers—freeing the team to focus on product, margins and customer service.

Ript

T.J. Mapes

Ript