Fitlovebox: a custom Magento subscription platform in a few months

About the client

Fitlovebox was a monthly box of health-focused products for people who want to eat better. Every box held at least five products: superfoods, healthy food, diet products, supplements and vitamins, plus recipes. The contents were put together with a dietitian and a personal trainer. The subscription cost PLN 49 a month, and from PLN 42 a month in the 6-month package. The brand was covered by Newsweek and naTemat, among others.

The brand started out on Subcom.me, an off-the-shelf subscription system. In 2016 Endora moved it onto its own Magento platform, and the new store launched on 25 May 2016.

What we did

In a few months we built the new platform, wrote 8 custom Magento modules and shipped more than 450 changes to the code. The most important ones:

• A new platform on a proven engine: a clean Magento 1.9 with a subscription engine we had already proven in production, no unnecessary extensions, a new theme and a custom store design. Instead of building subscriptions from scratch, the brand launched quickly on ready, tested solutions.
• Migration from Subcom.me: an importer for customers, orders and discount codes, followed by data fixes after the import. Subscribers moved to the new store together with their order history and active discounts.
• A subscription that bills itself: choosing the box and plan on the offer page, monthly card charges handled by a job queue (Gearman), scripts that reconcile order statuses with the payment provider, and cash on delivery. In their account customers could pause their subscription and check the tracking number.
• A warehouse without chaos: an order view for warehouse staff that assigns each order to a specific person with picking statuses, a shipping list and the label with the order confirmation as PDFs in one click, and a Furgonetka integration that updates the order status once the parcel is dispatched. For sales: reports of active subscriptions and packages.
• Easy checkout: a one-page checkout with login and password reset without leaving the order, required consents at registration, and shipping and payment rules that depend on the product type (box, package, single product).
• Community and referrals: the Fitpoints loyalty program, post-delivery surveys rewarded with points, friend referrals by link and email invitation, an archive of previous boxes with reviews, customer testimonials, a blog with tips and a partner slider.
• Marketing and infrastructure: Google Tag Manager, Facebook Pixel, Criteo and Freshmail sync, transactional emails sent through Amazon SES, and moving the store from a server in AWS to a server at OVH.
• Business and technology consulting: choosing the platform and the migration approach, the order of features before launch, selecting payment providers and carriers, and warehouse processes.