How Landyachtz cut ecommerce costs by more than 75% and gained full control with WooCommerce

Since 1997, Landyachtz has been an iconic name in skateboard culture and innovation. Founded by two skateboarders in Vancouver, the company has grown into one of the most recognized names in longboarding and urban cycling, with a loyal global following and deep community roots.

From pioneering the longboard to hand-building custom cruisers and bikes, Landyachtz is built on craftsmanship and a spirit of adventure. They’re a community-focused company, and continue to sponsor grassroots events and host weekly skate nights.

Today, Landyachtz operates several successful business lines: wholesale, original equipment manufacturing (OEM), and direct-to-consumer (D2C) ecommerce. 

We sat down with Jacob Lambert, ecommerce and marketing specialist at Landyachtz to learn how switching from Shopify Plus to WooCommerce has saved them tens of thousands of dollars and granted them far more control and flexibility.

• Lowered yearly platform fees when switching from Shopify Plus to WooCommerce from $45,000 to less than $10,000.
• D2C ecommerce now represents 20% of total sales with an average order value (AOV) of $175.
• Refined their online experience from separate international websites to a single, flexible online store.
• Maintains around 1,500 SKUs, including completed builds, variable products, and components.

When Landyachtz decided to build out the D2C side of their business, they started with Shopify. During the pandemic, they saw an 8x increase in ecommerce sales, with exciting growth across their skating community. 

As Landyachtz’s ecommerce channel expanded alongside its global wholesale and manufacturing business, the team began to feel the strain of Shopify Plus. What once worked for a small D2C setup had become exponentially more expensive and limiting for a fast-growing, multi-region brand. 

Shopify was taking us to the cleaners with cross-border fees. The flexibility to run our business our way wasn’t there. We knew we needed a platform that gave us full control.

— Jacob Lambert, Ecommerce and Marketing Specialist, Landyachtz

Operating across Canada and the US also meant Lambert and team were running duplicate Shopify stores — doubling app costs, configuration work, and maintenance.

Beyond cost, Shopify’s rigid checkout experience restricted how Landyachtz could handle payments, offer buy-now-pay-later options, and manage regional pricing. Cross-border sales compounded the issue, with conversion and transaction fees eating into margins.

Landyachtz needed to reclaim control and reevaluate their costs by switching to a different platform — fast. So, at the start of 2024, they migrated to WooCommerce.

In 2024, Landyachtz relaunched their ecommerce site on WooCommerce, a move that immediately eliminated the constraints they faced on Shopify and gave them the flexibility to grow on their own terms. Annual platform costs dropped from roughly $45,000 to under $10,000, including hosting, extensions, and maintenance. 

With a single WooCommerce site, they now manage both USD and CAD transactions seamlessly through Braintree and Aelia, connecting each currency to separate bank accounts for simpler accounting. 

“WooCommerce gave us the ability to take full control of the payment gateways, currencies, and checkout on a single site,” said Lambert. “We’ve halved our workload and face no additional processing fees to run our multi-national business.”

Setting up video content and other custom post types on product pages became much easier to do as well. The team integrated their WooCommerce store seamlessly with Braintree and Aelia for streamlined cashflows, price displays, and accepting payments in multiple currencies. Extensions like Composite Products and Smart Coupons allow them to offer bundled products and run creative promotions that weren’t possible before.

More importantly, WooCommerce significantly cut down their annual costs and allowed Landyachtz to direct money to instead benefit the skaters themselves. Overall, the switch to WooCommerce unlocked:

• Full control of payment gateways, currency conversions, and a single checkout.
• Multiple bank accounts connected to one checkout.
• Actively set different manufacturer’s suggested retail prices (MRSPs) in different regions.
• A lower day-to-day workload.
• No additional processing fees for running a multinational business.
• Significant reduction in maintenance costs.

As Lambert reiterated: “I can’t think of a single performance metric that hasn’t improved since the switch.”

WooCommerce granted Landyachtz the flexibility to tailor their message and customer experience without any barriers.

With plans to transfer their wholesale B2B business fully onto WooCommerce, Landyachtz will soon be able to run the two major aspects of their business from a single, cost-effective platform — with all the control and flexibility they need.

Doing so will serve them well for their plans to expand and scale their presence in Australia, Europe, and other markets. Locally, Landyachtz continues to hit the streets of Vancouver and skate everyday, an embedded part of the local and internal skate communities, as seen through their Skate and Explore campaign.

With more time and money at their disposal, Landyachtz can prioritize what really matters: serving (and skating with) the locals wherever they go.

About

Mahrie Boyle

Mahrie leads integrated marketing at Woo, where she bridges growth, product, partnerships, and demand gen to drive platform growth across merchants, builders, agencies, and tech partners. She’s spent her career across SaaS, ecommerce, hosting, and open source. Outside of Woo, you'll find her biking, hiking, or liking… various dishes from restaurants around Toronto.