How Bolt’s Fraud Protection helped NuWave Marine become one of the fastest-growing private companies in America

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checkout rate for shoppers logged into their Bolt account

average order approval rate since go-live in July 2019

increase in overall website revenue from 2019 to 2021

NuWave Marine

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“Set it and forget it,” Nick Borrell said of the peace of mind Bolt’s fraud protection has given him and NuWave Marine.

“The single sign-on fixed all of our issues with guest checkouts. The single sign-on is 100% necessary. It’s weird that we operated without it.”

Owner and Master Tech of <a href="https://nuwavemarine.com/">NuWave Marine</a>, Ken Borrelli, knows a thing or two about turning a passion into a successful business. When Ken was 12 years old, he started repairing and building small boats in his parent’s backyard. Ken made his dream a reality by starting NuWave Marine, a family-owned retail store, service department, and boat dealership, in 1987.Fast forward to 2008. Ken began to see the benefits of ecommerce and started NuWave Marine’s online presence with an eBay shop. Within a few years, the eBay store became the company’s fastest-growing source of revenue. Ken rode the momentum and launched NuWave Marine’s very own online shop.Ken’s son, Nick Borrelli, has since joined the family business in sales and ecommerce marketing. Together they have seen their company grow tremendously with no signs of slowing down.

<h3>Challenges with fraud</h3>NuWave Marine sells high-priced items like boat parts and supplies on their ecommerce site, making average order values high. And when you sell premium products, you’re inherently prone to fraud.Nick knew he needed a fraud solution partner he could count on to scale NuWave Marine effectively. “We sell a lot of high-ticket items and have always had issues with fraud. We started out doing a lot of our own fraud monitoring—and got really good with larger orders—but it was time-consuming,” said Nick.At the time, Nick and his team were using Braintree for their payment processor. Nick recalls that Braintree was just starting to develop their fraud solution, so he leaned on them for support. While Braintree would offer their two cents on whether or not they believed the order was fraudulent, they didn’t provide a guarantee—rendering their fraud protection impractical for NuWave Marine.&nbsp;Nick wanted his team to focus less on fraud on more impactful things like customer experience with their busy season approaching. Nick recalled saying to his team, “We can’t be doing this fraud monitoring all the time.” Fraud was costing NuWave Marine too many valuable resources. It was clear to Nick that he needed a partner with chargeback management support.<h3>Enter Bolt</h3>In July 2019, Nick and the NuWave Marine team onboarded Bolt into their <a href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/">BigCommerce</a> platform and leveraged Bolt’s powerful checkout and fraud prevention capabilities. Soon after, NuWave Marine saw significant benefits from the partnership.The dynamic trifecta of Nick’s ecommerce expertise, BigCommerce’s robust platform, and Bolt’s innovative suite of products has helped NuWave Marine achieve massive strides from 2019 to 2021 including:• 41% increase in overall website revenue• 99% three-year growth in revenue• 24% increase in overall conversion rates• 20% increase in checkout ratesAdditionally in 2021, NuWave Marine was featured as one of the fastest-growing private companies in America by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.inc.com/profile/nuwave-marine">Inc. 5000</a> for for their three-year revenue growth between 2019 and 2021.But perhaps the best benefit Nick has received from Bolt is peace of mind. “Set it and forget it,” Nick said of Bolt’s fraud protection. He added, “Bolt catches stuff every day for us, especially on the electronics end of our business, which makes up ten percent of our orders.”&nbsp;Since go-live in July 2019, Bolt has repaid 20 transactions that came back as fraudulent. As part of the <a href="https://boltfinancial.wpengine.com/fraud-protection/">100% Fraud Chargeback Guarantee</a>, Bolt has paid over $17k back to NuWave Marine while maintaining an average order approval rate of 99.4%.

<h3>An unexpected bonus</h3>Initially, Nick was solely interested in Bolt’s fraud protection benefits but said, “the better checkout was a huge plus.” Nick added, “It’s obvious that Bolt’s checkout on BigCommerce works better than what we had before.” He noted that after implementing Bolt, Nick’s team was able to focus more on conversion optimization and user experience.In December of 2021, Nick and the team went live with <a href="https://boltfinancial.wpengine.com/sso-commerce/">Bolt SSO Commerce</a>, which solved a lot of confusion for NuWave Marine’s shoppers who couldn’t understand why they had to sign in to the site and then into their Bolt accounts. Nick said, “The single sign-on fixed all of our issues with guest checkouts.” He added, “The single sign-on is 100% necessary. It’s weird that we operated without it.”<h3>Looking forward to more growth in the future</h3><a href="https://help.bolt.com/merchants/references/checkout-features/buttons/product-page-checkout-button/">Product Page Checkout</a>, an express-checkout option offered by Bolt recently went live on NuWave Marine’s site. When asked what he’s hoping to achieve with this one-page shopping experience, Nick said, “Anything that makes it easier for my customers to buy something is helpful.”According to Nick, Product Page Checkout will make single-item orders a breeze. “Anytime you cut a step out for people, it makes their life easier,” he said. Nick is especially looking forward to telling his shoppers who know what they’re looking for that shopping on his site is as easy as going to the page, pressing one button, and the product is theirs. Nick should be optimistic—merchants using Bolt’s Product Page Checkout have seen up to 20% of total volume come through the feature.As NuWave Marine grows, Ken, Nick, and the team can continue to offer customers a gold-standard shopping experience from end to end with Bolt.

How Bolt’s Fraud Protection helped NuWave Marine become one of the fastest-growing private companies in America

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