Bolt's Enterprise Evolution, Two Years In

<p>I became CEO of Bolt just over two years ago, and while I’m usually focused on the future, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on how far we’ve come.</p><p>In some respects, we remain the same Bolt as ever: eagerly building to reshape ecommerce. But our core customer and product offering is different now than it was two years ago. The biggest shift was prioritizing products for enterprise retailers. Two years ago, we began with just a couple of global retailers leveraging our network; today, we’ve onboarded several multi-billion dollar public companies onto the Bolt platform. When we set out, our shopper network was fledgling; fast forward to today and one-third of the entire US shopping population recognizes Bolt at checkout.</p><p>We have adapted, innovated, and executed with a speed that showcases our dedication to our mission. The best indicator: our competitors are now following in our footsteps.</p><h2>The shift to enterprise</h2><p>The impetus for our shift to enterprise retailers was noticing that large retailers faced the same problems as their smaller counterparts: payment and checkout systems that don’t enhance conversion, brand equity, or customer loyalty. Despite their size and market power, these larger retailers lacked products and services tailored to their scale.</p><p>When we set out to build an enterprise-grade embedded checkout experience, we saw a gap in the market but knew filling it would be no simple task. First came building innovative technology that could transform global retail from the inside out. Next, we had to integrate tightly with the existing commerce ecosystems, down to the API layers. At the same time, we had to ensure an unshakably resilient, secure, scalable foundation that was up to strict enterprise caliber.</p><p>Beyond the tech, we worked to assemble and grow a shopper network with critical mass—recognizing over 80 million US shoppers—to grease the wheels of cross-retail purchasing. We reconfigured marketing strategies, forged new partnerships, and invested deeply in understanding customer needs.</p><p>Through a sharp focus on our north star—delivering robust innovation embedded where the customer lives—we confronted each challenge. There were certainly bumps on the road, but the results speak for themselves: Key customers like Casper, Revolve, Signet, Hanes, Toys’R’Us, Kay Jewelers, and Saks OFF 5TH signed on and are seeing remarkable and quantifiable benefits.</p><p>As a company, we’ve filed patents around our hallmark enterprise product, <a href="https://www.bolt.com/bolt-ignite">Bolt Ignite</a>, which provides large merchants with a customized checkout experience that allows them to retain their branding and technological flexibility—powered by our vast shopper network. We spotted a problem no one was solving—and we solved it.</p><h2>Growing the Bolt Network</h2><p>The fuel for Bolt’s enterprise ambitions is our shopper network. When we decided two years ago to prioritize pivoting up-market, our network sat at about 10 million shoppers. Today? Our <a href="https://www.bolt.com/network" target="_blank">Universal Shopper Network</a> is the largest API-based network in the US, hosting up-to-date account information for over 80 million shoppers.</p><p>One of our biggest learnings was counterintuitive: Even big enterprise retailers benefit from our network and its insights. Retail leaders that I speak to mention that they may only see customers come back once or twice a year, and by the time they return, their contact or payment information may be out of date. Enter Bolt, which interacts with customers at every touchpoint of the customer journey across a multitude of retailers, helping all of them have the most current shopper information to provide a more seamless customer experience.</p><p>The growth of Bolt’s network combined with long-tenured customers leads to soaring shopper recognition rates. One leading global apparel retailer that has been with Bolt since 2020 sees over 50 percent of shoppers on its site enjoy a friction-free buying experience powered by Bolt.</p><p>More recognized shoppers means more sales—and the larger the Bolt network grows, the more conversion for recognized users improves, and the more brands benefit. Today, we can proudly say that Bolt shoppers convert over 50% higher than guest shoppers.</p><h2>Enterprise-level partnerships, speed, and testing</h2><p>To play in the enterprise market, you need enterprise-level partners. That’s why we signed and/or deepened partnerships with SAP, Adobe, and BigCommerce in the past two years.</p><p>As an endorsed app with SAP—their most rigorously tested, top-tier integration—we have already begun seamlessly connecting Bolt’s powerful network to several of their enterprise customers. These mutually beneficial partnerships expanded our reach while providing large retailers access to our innovative solutions.</p><p>We’ve also sped up internally. Two years ago, launching a merchant could take over six months of customized, complex engineering work. Ecommerce moves rapidly, and simply put, offering value to our merchants six months from signing was just not good enough. Since then, we rallied our team’s attention around this crucial timeline—reducing time-and-effort-to-launch to just one engineer and three weeks. This lets us scale efficiently and provide value to customers immediately.</p><p>A key pillar of our enterprise strategy has been enabling retailers to seamlessly test and measure Bolt’s value. Rather than push difficult-to-quantify promises, we have focused on empowering data-driven decisions through robust but intuitive A/B testing capabilities. Our approach allows our customers to run controlled experiments on key metrics from customer conversion to revenue growth.&nbsp;</p><p>We knew retailers needed to easily validate Bolt’s value scientifically through their own customer data. Our focus on powering frictionless testing and optimization has proven out with outstanding client results, and we’ll continue proving and unlocking Bolt’s immense value for the world’s most recognizable brands.</p><h2>Evolving with our customers</h2><p>Some merchants, like Casper, remain steady partners after years. But others like Revolve demonstrate how enterprises can evolve with Bolt. To kick-off the partnership with Revolve, Bolt powered a pop-up event at Revolve's New York Fashion Week Gallery in September 2022. After immediate success—to the tune of a remarkable sales increase of over 35% year over year—we expanded the relationship by integrating Bolt’s product into the Revolve website.</p><p>Revolve then tapped Bolt to also provide services for their sister-brand, FWRD. The brand utilized Bolt’s omnichannel checkout at its first-ever pop-up shop, and we partnered with them on the FWRD website, solidifying their presence within the Revolve family of brands. Revolve and Bolt have continually strengthened their partnership, illustrating how we can evolve with enterprises over time.</p><h2>The next two years</h2><p>Today, Bolt is ready to empower retailers of all sizes. But we will not rest on our laurels. Our goal is to rapidly onboard merchants to demonstrate quantifiable business value, and we’ve just introduced our <a href="https://www.bolt.com/20-20-guarantee" target="_blank">20/20 guarantee</a>: We guarantee we will recognize 20% of a merchant’s shoppers and improve their conversion by 20%, or the new merchant gets their money back.</p><p>Two years ago, we took a risk pivoting to enterprise, but through disciplined execution, we’ve made tremendous progress. Equipped with robust partnerships, an increasingly powerful network, and the 20/20 guarantee, Bolt’s commitment to enterprise innovation only grows stronger. More personally, my pride in Bolt has only grown after two fantastic years at the helm. Bolt is still in its early stages, and all the exciting innovations and opportunities are still ahead of us. The future is always demanding more innovation from us, and we are ready to work hard to move ecommerce forward to meet those expectations.</p>