Back in July I wrote about Good Native, our new app brand, and its first product, Bloom. At the time Bloom was in alpha on 8 stores, and we were waiting to hear back from the Shopify App Store.
Today we're launching it properly. Bloom is on the Shopify App Store, it has its own home at getbloom.today, and any Shopify store can install it. For a small Melbourne agency that has spent most of its life building other people's products, that feels like a big day, so I wanted to write a bit about how we got here.
Why we built it
We've spent years building and optimising eCom stores, and one moment kept coming up: a product sells out.
It's nearly always the product that's working hardest, like the best seller, the core size or the launch everyone's been waiting for. The ads are still running and the emails have gone out. Then someone lands on the page and the button just says Sold out. They leave, maybe for a competitor, and the brand never even knows they were there.
There are apps for this, but they had the problem I wrote about in July: they take more than they give. They look like someone else's widget, with the wrong font, the wrong spacing and a colour that's almost yours. They load scripts you didn't ask for, and making them look right means paying for custom development, which kind of defeats the point. We kept watching brands choose between the feature they needed and the experience their customers deserved.
So the idea behind Bloom was simple. A sold-out moment should still be a chance to make a sale, and it should look like the brand built it themselves.
When a variant sells out, Bloom gives the shopper somewhere to go. If they're happy to wait for it, the button flips to Pre-order the moment stock hits zero, and the ship date follows them through the cart and onto their order page. If they'd rather be told when it's back, they leave an email or phone number, and it goes straight into Klaviyo with the exact size or variant attached. And if they want something today, they see in-stock alternatives the brand has picked. There are no theme code edits, it doesn't slow the page down, and every detail can be styled to match the store.
How it's gone
Bloom started the way most of our tools do. We built it for real stores with real problems, and then we kept refining it.
The 8 alpha stores were generous with their feedback. They told us what was confusing, what was missing and what they'd actually use, and we shipped something almost every day. I wasn't exaggerating about that in July.
A lot of what's on getbloom.today didn't exist when we announced Good Native. Over the past three months we added sold-out upsells as a third way to keep the sale. We hooked Bloom into GA4, Meta and Google Ads so pre-orders and sign-ups show up as conversions, and made sure ShipStation, ShipBob, ShipHero and Ordoro hold pre-orders until the stock actually arrives. We built a bulk editor, because nobody wants to set up pre-orders one variant at a time. And we worked our way through App Store review.
Shopify approved us on 25 September. Then last week our first two public reviews came in, both five stars. The Flatiron Label wrote that Bloom "replaced our existing notify-me solution at a lower cost and allowed us to retain our styling." HARA wrote that it's "been fantastic at helping us drive incremental revenue both from Pre-Orders and notifications. Plus the support has been top-notch."
"Retain our styling" is pretty much the whole Good Native idea in three words, and it was lovely to read it from someone we hadn't asked to say it.
The early numbers
It's early and it's a small group of stores, so take these for what they are. But I promised we'd be open about what's working, and here's what the first brands have seen.
HARA turned on pre-orders for sold-out sizes and saw 240% conversion on them. Tim, their Head of Operations, told us his favourite parts are the oversell limit and the way Bloom switches to pre-order as soon as inventory hits zero. Skida's weekly sales roughly doubled during a sell-out. As Lizzy put it, "Pre-orders nearly doubled sales last week. We couldn't have done it without Bloom!"
Pacer pre-sold a new peach flavour before it launched. That drove 400% conversion and doubled their average order value. Hinu collected 1,240 waitlist sign-ups ahead of a single restock, which is 1,240 people who would otherwise have just left. And Merry People has made US$650,000 from sold-out upsells over six months by pointing shoppers to boots that were in stock.
One caveat. These are brands with great products and engaged customers. Bloom doesn't create demand. It just stops you throwing away demand you already have. Still, seeing the same pattern across lingerie, drinks, hair care, headwear and footwear gives us the confidence to put it in front of a lot more stores.
Why today matters
I've been building apps and websites for other people for more than 20 years, and for the last 6 we've done it as Harvey. Today is the first time we've put our own product out into the open market and said: it's ready, come and use it.
It matters to me for a few reasons. Harvey exists to unlock the potential of the new economy to leave behind a better world. Client work lets us do that one brand at a time, while Bloom puts a tool we believe in in the hands of brands we may never meet, at a price they can afford. There's a free plan, paid plans start at US$29 a month with every feature included, and there are no per-order fees.
It's also proof of what we said in July. Apps can be focused, fast and look like your brand without custom development. We can now point to Bloom, in public, with real reviews.
And the timing is good for merchants. Black Friday is on 27 November, and peak season is when best sellers sell out fastest and a Sold out button costs the most. Bloom takes under 15 minutes to set up, so there's plenty of time.
What's next
Launching isn't the finish line. We'll keep shipping the way we have, in small, frequent updates shaped by the stores using it. Hover, our site monitoring app, is next in line. And like everything we do, we'll keep sharing what we learn, including what doesn't work.
If you run a Shopify store, or work with brands that do, I'd love for you to try Bloom. You can have a look around at getbloom.today or book a demo with me. If you're already using it, thank you. A review helps more than you'd think, and we always want to hear what we should build next at [email protected].
Here's to sold out being the start of the sale, not the end of it.
Simon
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