Building an eCommerce Powerhouse

It is called the influencer effect.

In the space of four-years, Gold Coast based entrepreneurs Nik Mirkovic and Alex Tomic have turned their teeth whitening brand, HiSmile into a global phenomenon by using celebrity driven social media marketing campaigns to build awareness of their products.

This success driven by endorsements from the likes of Kylie Jenner and Connor McGregor has seen an initial investment of $20,000 to start the business turn into a company turning over $40 million per year.

Underpinning this success is the support of an e-commerce platform developed by leading Gold Coast digital marketing and creative agency Stead Lane, who’ve worked with HiSmile since 2014.

Stead Lane co-founder and managing director Flynn McFarlane said the agency’s focus on providing e-commerce solutions for its clients aligned perfectly with HiSmile's decision to only sell its products via its own website.

Part of our strategy as an agency has been to focus on providing turnkey solutions for enterprise clients, with a focus on driving revenue growth,

said Mr McFarlane, who is also President of Young Professionals Gold Coast.

“We’ve worked with HiSmile founders Alex and Nik, from very early on in the development of their business. Our focus was to provide them the ability to seamlessly convert website traffic to actual sales, while they focused on delivering the marketing strategy.”  

Stead Lane, which works with leading national and global brands including HiSmile, SurfStitch, Morlife, The Mad Hueys and City of Gold Coast, aims to redefine the e-commerce space.

Its focus is on providing marketing and e-commerce solutions for businesses looking to scale their businesses nationally and internationally through the strategic application of digital solutions focused on growing revenue.

For HiSmile this process took the form of developing a platform to support subscription growth built through third-party apps, with the model funnelling customers through to sample and trial new HiSmile products.

This multi-platform approach yielded almost instant results according to Mr McFarlane.

“Within the first month of the new website launching, it delivered more than 25% of their yearly subscriber’s goal,” Mr McFarlane said.

“Our focus was to deliver a seamless, international launch across five separate online stores (all using different currencies).

This is a perfect example of the way we operate and how we focus on ensuring that we complement our clients plans and focus on assisting them achieve their commercial goals.

Stead Lane worked with HiSmile to ensure that the implementation was seamless and tied in with the overall marketing strategy,

HiSmile founders Nik Mirkovic and Alex Tomic believe it is this focus on developing digital solutions & focusing on building client revenue that has made Stead Lane a valued partner for HiSmile as the business has grown.

Initially selecting the agency in 2014, HiSmile worked with Stead Lane across the following years as it grew, even using them to help develop an internal technology strategy once they’d reached a size to accommodate dedicated IT resources.

“We’ve worked with Stead Lane closely for a number of years and the reason why is because they’ve helped to build a platform for us that has allowed us to easily convert website traffic into sales as it is so seamless,” Mr Tomic said.

“This approach has allowed us to focus on developing and implementing our marketing strategy knowing that Stead Lane had developed a seamless experience for our customers once they’d arrived to our website. This is much the same way in which bricks and mortar retailers rely on seamless customer service, our business relies on the online equivalent – a service Stead Lane delivered.”