Rebelz is a niche e-commerce store focused on three sports: Brazilian jiu-jitsu, no-gi grappling, and traditional wrestling. The store sells to customers around the world and brings together a wide range of products from multiple countries, so customers can order everything in one place.
We carry our own products, but instead of ordering separately from the UK, Poland, and the US, customers can get it all from us. I think that's what a lot of our customers appreciate.
Daniel has run Rebelz largely on his own for a long time, and the team is now two people. The challenge has been finding ways to become more efficient without having to hire more staff, without the customer experience suffering.
A clear example was returns and cancelled orders. Before Rebelz started using our Returns and Withdrawals for WooCommerce plugin, the process was manual and time consuming for the store to handle. Daniel has also seen how many other online retailers, large and small, make things unnecessarily complicated for the customer, with email exchanges and paper forms.
A lot of stores try to hide how to make a return. You have to email, you have to fill out some complicated form. It's really frustrating. Now we're almost pushing people toward it: if you want to do it, then you're gonna do it. And that means we skip all the emails about it.
Daniel points out that customers will want to cancel or return an order regardless of whether the process is easy or difficult. The only question is how much time and friction it costs the store and the customer.
The idea for the return flow originally came from Daniel, as a response to a concrete need in his own business. That is also at the core of the collaboration between Rebelz and Krokedil, which has lasted around ten years, since Rebelz switched to Klarna and later Specter.
You can think of me as your idea generator for features or new plugins. If you run with it, I get a product I want and get to help shape it, and then you can sell it on.
The return process was a clear example of this: Daniel identified the problem, discussed with Krokedil how other online retailers and WooCommerce handle it, and the solution took shape through close collaboration into what is now Returns and Withdrawals for WooCommerce. When the new EU right of withdrawal law came into effect, it became even clearer that more stores needed a solution, and Rebelz was already ahead of the curve.
I asked Niklas: how many other stores are running the return plugin now? 'No, it's just you.' It's crazy, because it's so easy to use.
At that point, Rebelz was still nearly the only store using the solution, before it launched more broadly in June. Since launch, the plugin has gained a significantly larger number of users among WooCommerce stores.
For Daniel, the value comes down to working out what your own time actually costs, compared to what the plugin costs:
Say I cost 300 Swedish kronor an hour and spend ten hours a month doing it manually. That's a really simple equation.
He believes this kind of concrete, numbers-based comparison is exactly what helps customers understand the value, rather than it just feeling like “yet another cost”:
You need to get them to understand how much time and money is actually at stake. Otherwise it's just, 'well, now it's yet another plugin.'
Daniel looks back on his own past mistakes as a small online retailer, holding back on costs without factoring in what his time was worth:
I used to sit there manually copying contact details between different windows, just to save money on a shipping plugin. Looking back, I thought: how ridiculous, I could have spent that time growing sales instead.
Beyond the return flow, Rebelz has been an early adopter and contributor to several other solutions together with Krokedil, including:
We're not afraid to test things. We just go for it, and figure it out as we go. That's the advantage of having a flexible partnership. I think it works really well.
Returns and Withdrawals for WooCommerce gives you the same option as Rebelz: a simple, self-service return flow that meets the requirements for the right of withdrawal – and frees up time for what actually grows your business.
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