Stripe teams up with Bodum to help company grow online

Family-run company pivoted to online selling during pandemic

Technology company Stripe has teamed up with kitchen accessories company Bodum to grow its online business.

The payments company was behind Bodum's ability to scale its direct-to-consumer online business to 23 countries in Europe, North America, Australia, and Asia during the pandemic.

"Stripe helped us respond quickly to the complex challenges that the pandemic threw our way," said ecommerce manager Peter Bodum.

“We had to pivot our business to meet increased online demand and set our system up in less than a month. Thanks to Stripe, we have been able to launch in new countries, focus on enhancing our direct sales approach, and ramp up our sustainability efforts, without worrying about developer resources or system updates.”

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The family-run company had built a strong network to sell its products through thousands of retailers, but with non-essential retail largely closed overnight in response to the coronavirus pandemic, shoppers turned to online channels. With a surge in demand from its website, ecommerce became Bodum’s primary distribution channel.

Optimises

Bodum partnered with Stripe to audit and optimise its payments process, and integrated Stripe Elements into its ecommerce set-up, which allowed the company to instantly accept credit cards and offer the preferred payment methods for its customers in Belgium and the Netherlands, with just a few lines of code.

“Sometimes people think that online is easy, but payment is something that is actually very sensitive to many customers,” said Mr Bodum. “People expect simple checkout processes. One too many inconvenient clicks, or a payment that doesn’t work – and we’ve lost a sale.”

Mr Bodum said the international expansion would continue online and offline, with flexibility a key consideration. The deal is another success for Stripe, which recently announced Ford and Spotify as users on its platform.

Stripe was founded by Irish brothers Patrick and John Collison in 2009, and has dual-headquarters in Dublin and San Francisco, employing more than 7,000 people worldwide. More than 500 people are based in the Dublin office, the company's largest engineering hub outside the US. The company handles billions of dollars in transactions each year.

Ciara O'Brien

Ciara O'Brien

Ciara O'Brien is an Irish Times business and technology journalist