Jeannine Traynham’s boutique had an audience. What it needed was a dependable way to bring that audience back. The Empire Collection relied heavily on Facebook Live, with the familiar uncertainty of a business whose next sale depended on somebody else’s feed. Then it added a shopping app built with Superfans.io. Push notifications announced restocks. Exclusive drops gave people a reason to open it. Live shopping supplied the occasion.
- Branded iOS and Android shopping apps for Shopify merchants.
- A focus on repeat buyers, early access, and live selling.
- Starter listed at $150 monthly; Unlimited at $1,000 monthly.
- Success depends on additional profitable orders, not downloads alone.
In the company’s published case study, the app reached 44.7% of the boutique’s attributed revenue within four months. That is a striking share, though attribution cannot tell us how much spending would have happened anyway. The useful detail is the change in routine: Traynham began identifying top buyers, approaching quieter customers, and shaping messages for each group. The app gave those decisions somewhere to happen.
“our mobile app did more revenue than our website”Jeannine Traynham · The Empire Collection
The customer who already knows your name
Superfans.io, formerly Vajro, sells a particular idea of mobile commerce. A website welcomes passing traffic. An app can give an established customer a familiar entrance, with early access, personal offers, and product launches arranged around their interests. Its current pitch concerns the people who already like the brand enough to return.
The company says its team has built more than 5,000 mobile apps. Its customer examples range from Supermarket Italy and Dookan to Willow Boutique. Fashion, beauty, nutrition, and lifestyle brands recur in its positioning. These are businesses where the next collection or replenishment can provide a plausible reason to check in again.
The distinction matters. An invitation marked VIP becomes rather embarrassing if the guest finds the usual sale rack. Superfans supplies ways to make the invitation tangible: app-exclusive drops, discounts, shipping offers, and behavior-based experiences. The merchant must decide what privilege is worth offering. Software can open the door; it cannot decide whether the room deserves company.
A store in blocks, a show on two screens
The practical product is a no-code builder for branded iOS and Android shopping apps. Merchants choose themes, adjust colors and fonts, and arrange widgets such as product sliders, countdown timers, and video banners. Shopify synchronization connects the app to the existing store. A separate preview app lets the merchant scan a dashboard QR code and see the customer experience on a phone.
Push campaigns can announce a launch or respond to behavior, including an abandoned cart. Rich media adds pictures, videos, or GIFs. Scheduling and segmentation let the shopkeeper address a smaller, more relevant audience. The appeal is practical: a restock message need not interrupt every customer who ever downloaded the app.
Live selling adds an unusually theatrical component. The documented Vajro workflow uses two devices: a computer for the dashboard and a phone for the broadcast. A merchant can stream to the shopping app and Facebook, display products, manage comments, and reserve carts. Draft sessions and replays help a show survive beyond its original airtime. Audience reports supply something to examine after the host stops smiling.
The failure was behind the screen
The founders’ earlier venture was a consumer price-comparison app. In Baskar Agneeswaran’s 2020 podcast account, the team spent roughly two years confronting the work of maintaining retail-price data. They had outsourced the backend. Their own expertise was mobile development, while the difficult part of the business sat elsewhere.
Agneeswaran, Niwin Santhosh, and Raghuraman Ramamurthy changed direction. They tested the mobile-commerce idea on Cart Rocket before launching on Shopify in June 2018. An initial $25 monthly price encouraged installs and reviews in a marketplace where other merchants could discover the product. The lesson is pleasantly unromantic: choose a problem whose hardest work belongs to your team.
By January 2022, Vajro announced an $8.5 million Series A from Five Elms Capital. It said the funding would support a next-generation platform and additional commerce integrations. The current Superfans offer concentrates on Shopify and Shopify Plus. That narrower commercial identity gives buyers a clearer question: how does this app fit the store they already operate?
The app joins the conversation
Superfans sits between a commerce platform and a retention stack. It is useful to think of it as another customer-facing channel with connections to tools already doing specialized jobs. LoyaltyLion and Smile.io are listed integrations. Review tools contribute social proof. Algolia handles product discovery.
The Klaviyo connection is especially revealing. App behavior can inform segments and trigger messages across push, email, and SMS. Product views, registrations, and abandoned carts become clues for the next conversation. A merchant need not invent a separate personality for each channel; the point is to carry relevant customer context between them.
Tapcart, Shopney, Plobal Apps, Appbrew, and MageNative occupy the neighboring app-builder market. Superfans’ combination of live selling, VIP access, and assisted design gives merchants specific things to compare. Support belongs on that list: boutique testimonials repeatedly describe help with setup and migration, work that can matter as much as another dashboard feature.
The arithmetic behind the invitation
At the time of review, Shopify lists Starter at $150 a month and Unlimited at $1,000 a month, or $10,000 annually. Both offer 30-day trials. Superfans’ main pricing page emphasizes Unlimited, a revenue selector, unlimited integrations and push notifications, a price-lock guarantee, and dedicated design and strategic account support. A store-specific quote settles which offer applies.
At $20 contribution per genuinely additional order, 50 extra orders cover a $1,000 subscription. Assumption-based arithmetic, not a customer result.
The word additional does considerable work here. Moving an existing website purchase into an app changes channel attribution without necessarily increasing profit. A sensible trial follows repeat purchasing and contribution after discounts, alongside installs and engagement. There is also staff time: someone must plan the drops, prepare the streams, and decide which notifications deserve attention.
Give the regulars something to return for
The company’s own retention guidance looks for repeat-purchase patterns before recommending an app. That is a useful buying condition. A brand with returning customers and frequent launches has occasions to build around. A store selling an infrequently replaced item, or still searching for its first dependable audience, has a harder case to make.
The idea a reader can copy costs less than a subscription: identify a returning-customer group, give it a concrete benefit, and measure whether the benefit changes purchasing. Early access is testable. A more convenient reorder is testable. A flattering label, by itself, buys very little. Superfans’ wager becomes interesting when the customers have something worth queuing for.