Shore Watersports Family
1982
Shore Watersports began its journey in 1982 with humble roots, operating out of a beach hut in East Wittering, Sussex.
Decades later, the business remains in East Wittering, albeit in a much larger and more advanced "beach hut”, and has grown into the UK’s leading surf retailer, offering the widest range of surf fashion and watersports hardware online.
2024
In 2024, Shore Watersports expanded its business by acquiring two established online retailers: FlipFlop Shop and Sandal Shop.
These acquisitions were a strategic move to grow sales without significant upfront investment. Both businesses had strong customer bases and solid traction in the market, making them an ideal fit for Shore’s expansion plans.
Since Shore already stocked many of the same brands and products, the integration required only minor adjustments to introduce new styles that complemented the new storefronts.
A Seamless Technology Integration
To ensure efficiency and maintain streamlined operations, Shore wanted to run FlipFlop Shop and Sandal Shop using its existing technology stack. Wind & Kite proposed creating new Magento store views and custom themes within Shore’s core Magento 2 site. This approach allowed the newly acquired stores to instantly benefit from Shore’s well-developed integrations and functionality while keeping maintenance costs low with a single codebase.
Given the stock overlap across the three sites, Wind & Kite worked with Shore to integrate stock checkers and product images, creating a cohesive shopping experience across the brand family. This also simplified inventory management, allowing Shore’s team to track, maintain, and ship products from one central location.
Choosing Hyvä for a Fast and Modern Redesign
A key part of the transition was the rapid development of new, fully functional storefronts for FlipFlop Shop and Sandal Shop.
Wind & Kite achieved this in just five weeks, from initial discussions to go-live, by leveraging Hyvä themes for the redesign.
Hyvä was selected because it provided a solid foundation for fast development, outstanding site performance straight out of the box, and a simplified, modern programming structure.
This not only improved the overall usability of the sites but also made future Magento updates and maintenance easier.
Designing Unique Yet Cohesive Brand Identities
Although both stores focus on flip flops and sandals, they serve distinct customer bases and required individual branding while maintaining a connection to the Shore Watersports identity.
A carefully selected colour palette was created for each site, influencing what became known internally as the “party bars”, the header and footer elements that clearly differentiate the two stores.
FlipFlop Shop was designed to evoke the feeling of a sunny beach holiday, with warm, vibrant colours that reflect a relaxed, carefree shopping experience.
Sandal Shop embraced a more outdoorsy, wanderlust-inspired aesthetic, appealing to adventurers and nature lovers without relying on cliché imagery.
By integrating these elements into the design, Shore successfully conveyed the essence of each brand while maintaining a seamless and familiar experience for its customers.
A Stronger Future for Shore
The acquisition and integration of FlipFlop Shop and Sandal Shop have strengthened Shore Watersports’ position in the market, adding extra revenue streams with minimal disruption. Thanks to the thoughtful approach to technology, design, and logistics, the transition has been smooth, ensuring a better shopping experience for customers and an efficient operation for the Shore team.
As Shore continues to grow, these expansions demonstrate how strategic acquisitions, combined with the right technology and branding, can enhance an already successful business without unnecessary complexity.
Wind & Kite were crucial in the implementation and were able to meet all the tight time lines set by Shore to deliver a successful product. Thanks to the success of this launch Shore are now looking at further sites to be built in the same way to help further scale the business using the existing stack.
Our client says...
"“ Finding someone you can trust with your business is never easy, especially in smaller family-run firms like ours. We don’t have huge resource and taking a leap like expanding our store fronts was a big step.
We don't look at Wind & Kite as an agency, we look at them as an extension of our in-house team, and the access they allow to actual developers who know what they are doing vs slick sales guys makes all the difference as can be seen with the speed and success of these new sites.””