How FUAARK flipped COD to 60% prepaid and increased conversions by 30% in 6 months

+30%

Prepaid share

85%

User identification with Shop Pass

Anonymous users / day unlocked for retargeting

Meet the brand

Founded in 2017 in Surat by Rimpy Juneja, Swati Narang Juneja, and Saket Juneja, Fuaark is a homegrown Indian gymwear and activewear brand built for serious training. Focused on performance-driven design, Fuaark creates high-function apparel for men and women — engineered for lifting, cardio, and high-intensity sessions. The brand emphasizes tapered fits, 4-way stretch fabrics, and durable, soft-touch materials that move with the body under stress.

Meet the brand

Challenges

FUAARK was on Shopify Basic. That meant limited checkout control.

“We couldn’t run payment related offers. We couldn’t show any sort of upsell or cross sell items on the checkout.

- Divyang Kalgude, Sr Marketing Manager, Fuaark

This created 3 big challenges.

1. 70% of orders were COD

Most customers were choosing Cash on Delivery.

70% COD
Only 30% prepaid

But the team had no way to encourage prepaid orders.

No payment offers. No smart nudges. No flexibility.

They were simply accepting whatever payment method the customer picked.

And that limited cash flow and control.

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2. Thousands of visitors were leaving without being identified

FUAARK was getting around 20,000 sessions per day.

But only 250–300 users per day with first-party data attached were entering their retargeting journey.

The remaining ~19,000+ daily visitors were anonymous users — visitors with no phone number or email captured.

Which meant most traffic could not be retargeted.

3. Checkout Wasn’t Helping Increase Order Value

Like most apparel brands, a majority of revenue came from a small group of core products mainly t-shirts and joggers.

Accessories such as socks contributed less than 1% of GMV. Not because customers didn’t need them.

But because there was no structured way to present them at the moment of highest buying intent in checkout.

Without upsell or cross-sell placements, lower-ticket accessories had no real distribution channel. They weren’t visible when customers were already ready to pay.

As a result, checkout was not helping increase AOV. It was only completing transactions.

The real issue - checkout was just processing orders.

It wasn’t:

Capturing more customers
Encouraging prepaid
Increasing order value

And for a performance-focused D2C brand, that’s a missed opportunity.

FUAARK didn’t need more traffic. They needed checkout to do more work.

Evaluation criteria

FUAARK didn’t switch checkout partners impulsively.

Divyang had already worked with multiple checkout solutions across brands. Before finalizing Shopflo, he evaluated other solutions such as Gokwik, Razorpay Magic Checkout and Shiprocket Checkout

This wasn’t a feature comparison exercise. It was a performance decision.

As Divyang explains:

“I did A/B testing as well with Shopflo and other checkouts. There I found Shopflo was giving me much better results in terms of purchase rate and average order value.”

The evaluation came down to four clear criteria.

1. Performance over promises

For FUAARK, the decision wasn’t based on UI demos or feature lists. It was based on A/B testing.

When tested against other checkout partners, Shopflo showed:

Higher purchase rate
Higher average order value
Better address pre-fill rate
Better login rate

Even small friction points mattered.

“I found a very significant lag on that OTP stage… It plays a significant role in that purchase journey.”

At scale, even minor delays during login can impact drop-offs. The checkout that moved faster — converted better.

And the data made the choice clear.

2. Clean, focused checkout experience

Divyang describes checkout experience as subjective — but impactful.

“I personally feel Shopflo is much more neat and clean in terms of UI UX.”

For a gymwear brand with high mobile traffic, checkout clarity matters. Cross-sells, discounts, and payment options need to be visible — but not overwhelming.

Compared to other solutions tested, Shopflo felt simpler, more structured, and easier to navigate.

And simplicity converts.

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3. Control over payment strategy

One of the biggest limitations with Shopify Basic was the inability to run payment-related offers.

This was non-negotiable for FUAARK.

They needed:

The ability to test prepaid incentives
Flexibility in running payment nudges
More control over COD vs prepaid mix

Other solutions provided parts of this — but the combination of control and performance was strongest with Shopflo.

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4. Checkout as a revenue lever - not just a payment gateway

FUAARK wasn’t looking for just a “faster checkout.”

They wanted checkout to:

Increase AOV
Surface accessories
Support cross-sell placements
Capture more first-party data

Many checkout solutions focus heavily on one-click speed.

But for FUAARK, speed alone wasn’t enough.

The checkout had to influence behavior.

When tested holistically; performance, UX, payment control, upsell capability; Shopflo delivered stronger results across the board.

At the end of the evaluation, the decision wasn’t emotional. It was data-backed.

“The purchase rate was better… the average order value was better… address pre-fill rate was better… login rate was better.”

Solution & strategies

Once FUAARK chose Shopflo, the team focused on three core areas:

Capture more intent
Shift payment behavior
Increase order value

Here’s how they executed it.

1. Shop Pass to scale first-party identification

“Significant delta which Shop Pass has brought to our store.”

- Divyang Kalgude, Sr Marketing Manager, Fuaark

The first unlock was intent capture.

Before Shop Pass, only 250–300 users per day were entering FUAARK’s retargeting journey despite ~20,000 daily sessions.

That meant most visitors couldnt be identified. After implementing Shop Pass:

Around 80% of users were identified
4,000–5,000 previously anonymous users per day (users without first-party data) now entered the same journey.
Around 40% of identified users initiated checkout

This dramatically changed retargeting efficiency.

Instead of depending only on returning customers, FUAARK could now retarget high-intent product viewers across WhatsApp, SMS, email, Meta, and Google.

2. Leveraged COD to prepaid nudges

COD was dominating at 70%.

Instead of removing COD (which could hurt conversions), the team introduced a smarter approach.

They introduced a 5% discount on prepaid orders, but with a cap of ₹40.

But the ₹40 cap wasn’t chosen randomly. The team used Shopflo’s A/B testing experiments to determine the right incentive level.

Initially, the prepaid offer was capped at ₹50. They then reduced the cap to ₹40 and ran a controlled experiment to measure the impact on prepaid adoption.

The outcome was clear. There was no drop in prepaid ratio after lowering the cap.

As Divyang explains:

“Earlier we used to offer 50 rupees… when I tried A/B testing and reduced that to 40 rupees, there were no changes in the prepaid ratio.”

This meant:

Customers were not highly sensitive to the exact discount amount
The nudge itself was enough
The brand could reduce discount burn without hurting prepaid share

This is important. FUAARK didn’t increase prepaid from 30% to 60% by giving bigger discounts.

They increased it by:

Offering a small, smart incentive
Capping it to control margins
Testing and optimizing instead of assuming

That’s performance-led checkout strategy and not blanket discounting.

3. Using Upsell to drive AOV

FUAARK’s revenue was concentrated in core SKUs like t-shirts and joggers.

Accessories had low visibility. So instead of pushing them on the homepage, the team moved the strategy to checkout.

They tested:

Bags (₹1,000–₹2,500 range)
Socks (₹200 complementary item)

The insight was powerful. Customers with cart values of ₹5,000 were adding bags even without discounts when shown at checkout.

Socks, which previously contributed less than 1% of GMV, began gaining traction through cross-sell placements.

As Divyang explains:

“To lower ticket size, we cannot promote it directly. But upsell cross placements give good traction and eyeballs.”

They also used one-click add-ons strategically, but only for products that wouldn’t create friction.

In apparel, size selection is always a barrier. If a customer adds a t-shirt at checkout and then has to choose a size again, it breaks the flow. That extra decision step can slow the buyer down or worse, cause drop-off.

To avoid this, FUAARK limited one-click add-ons to free-size items like bags and socks.

This insight was powerful.

It showed that:

Customers were not highly sensitive to the exact discount amount
The presence of a prepaid incentive mattered more than the size of it
The brand could reduce discount burn without sacrificing prepaid growth

As a result, prepaid orders increased from 30% to 60% not because FUAARK offered deeper discounts, but because they used a smarter incentive strategy.

4. Monitoring analytics to drive optimization

The strategy didn’t stop at implementation. Divyang’s team uses checkout analytics daily to monitor

Purchase rate
COD vs prepaid ratio
AOV
Cross-sell contribution
Channel performance

“We are using your analytics day in, day out… It gives us clarity on how the checkout is working.”

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Results realized

The impact wasn’t incremental, it was meaningful.

Across conversion, order value, and user identification, checkout optimization created measurable gains that directly improved revenue efficiency.

The results are summarized below:

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Metric	Before Shopflo	After Shopflo
Conversion Rate	Baseline	25–30% uplift in overall conversion
Average Order Value (AOV)	Baseline	30–35% higher AOV
Retargetting scale	Identify 250–300 anonymous users /day	4,000–5,000 anonymous users/day
User Identification (Shop Pass)	Limited to returning users	~80% users identified

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Bottom line

For brands operating at scale, checkout isn’t just infrastructure.

It’s where intent either compounds or leaks. FUAARK chose to make it compound.

As Divyang puts it:

“I will definitely recommend Shopflo for its neat and clean UI UX. I personally feel it’s very user friendly.
Because of their pre-fill rate, and how they helped us improve the prepaid ratio — it has made a real difference for us.”

Divyang Kalgude, Sr. Marketing Manager, FUAARK

Curious how this could work for you?

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