Bombas Finds Its Media Management Footing by Optimizing Experiences With Cloudinary 

Bombas is a leading mission-based sock and apparel brand that relies on its website not just as its primary sales channel, but also to help fulfill its commitment to those in need, at risk, or experiencing homelessness. The brand’s “one purchased = one donated” commitment has so far resulted in more than 40 million clothing items donated to those in need. And while the company is expanding into other channels, like wholesale, Bombas has invested heavily in e-commerce and sees no signs of this primary channel slowing down in the future. For that reason, the apparel brand selected Cloudinary to help deliver a visually rich site that ensures an optimal customer experience for every visitor, regardless of the type of device used to access the website.

Bombas is a comfort-focused apparel brand with a mission to help those in need. The company launched in 2013, after the founders learned that socks are the most requested clothing item at homeless shelters. From there, they set out to solve that problem, donating a pair of socks for every pair they sell. In 2019, Bombas used its expertise in comfort to introduce the most comfortable t-shirt. And continuing with its mission, Bombas donates a specially-designed t-shirt to someone in need for every t-shirt sold. To date, Bombas has donated more than 40 million pairs of socks and t-shirts to those at-risk, in need, and experiencing homelessness. 

THE CHALLENGE

Image Optimization for Better User Experience During Peak Sales Period

Bombas was undergoing a major redesign of its Shopify-based website, Bombas.com, with one of the goals being the ability to serve more devices with a responsive design. But the process was causing more work for its creative and web teams when it came to managing media, which included more than 10,000 product images at any given time.

They faced numerous challenges, including fixed asset sizes; images that had no bleed area, which made it difficult to manipulate and change the aspect ratio; and use of different color backgrounds on different pages, which were all done manually in Photoshop. Complicating matters even more, Bombas also was in the process of rebranding, so there was uncertainty whether the background color schemes would remain the same or need to be updated once that project was complete. 

Bombas was planning to make these major changes just prior to the end of the year, which is the company’s peak time for its seasonal business. It was imperative that the final web design didn’t hamper the user experience, because it could impact sales and the company’s efforts to help those in need with donations.

THE CLOUDINARY SOLUTION

Image Optimization and Responsive Delivery

Heading into the fourth quarter, Bombas selected Cloudinary as its solution for optimizing and transforming images for the website, with the goal of driving greater efficiency for its creative and merchandising teams, reducing network response times, and creating a better user experience, which has a direct bearing on conversion rates.

Cloudinary replaced Bombas’ original content delivery network, optimizing and transforming images stored directly on the Bombas eCommerce platform – Shopify.

Cloudinary also helped “ensure we have a truly responsive website without all the overhead needed to achieve that,” Weinstock added, noting that the solution’s underlying transformation capabilities, including cropping and resizing images, now ensures the Bombas site can look its best and function well on any device.

One of the bigger challenges Bombas faced was transforming images with colored backgrounds on product details pages to a white background for use elsewhere on the site. They also had to consider that the company was in process of rebranding, so they couldn’t predict what the correct background colors would be going forward. Cloudinary enabled Bombas to upload the images with transparent backgrounds, and then easily apply any background color or change it when needed.

THE RESULTS

Greater Design Efficiency and Faster Load Time to Grow Conversions 

Bombas only needed a few weeks to implement and integrate Cloudinary into its workflow. At the same time, Bombas went into SWAT mode to evaluate performance issues, and see where improvements could be made. “If we can shave off 100 milliseconds here or there, that will have a huge impact on our overall conversion and repeat rates, just by creating a solid user experience for our customers,” says Weinstock. “With Cloudinary, we were able to create very significant improvements to our page load times. We got through Black Friday and Cyber Monday very successfully and have continued to grow the business.” 

As Bombas brand guidelines have evolved, Cloudinary has been able to support changing image treatments and designs. “Really just being able to use the same image in different ways, rather than having to manually crop an image for a product detail page or product listing page, has saved us a lot of time,” says Kilzer. 

Kilzer also noted that the ease of these changes has unlocked the ability for Bombas to A/B test how different image treatments, like tight crops, larger size or wider views, impact performance and conversions. 

Bombas started using Cloudinary with a focus on optimization and transformation. “These are the kinds of things that you don’t want to have to think too much about, and Cloudinary lets us set it and forget it — it just works,” says Weinstock. Now his team has been freed up to focus on being more creative and solving bigger problems that can’t be automated through software. But with the early positive impacts for both the design team and Bombas customers, the company is exploring more advanced applications of Cloudinary within their environment, to support new and additional capabilities in the future.