We love unique gifts and apparel, and Creepy Company definitely delivers. Michael Myers Halloween-themed pajamas? Evil Dead socks? Their homepage boldly states they are "the world’s #1 destination for horror-themed blankets, rugs, lapel pins, apparel, & more.
This shop is an example of taking a love for a particular niche and making truly unique products, and selling them online on a visual treat of a shop with a solid spooky-but-fun vibe.
They have an online shop at https://www.creepycompany.com/, built on Shopify Plus.
Looking around online, we can piece together that Creepy Co. probably has around 10-15 employees and does $5MM in revenue.
They appear to be about 7 years old, and we didn't see that they currently have a retail store, so most of their sales are likely through their site.
Creepy Co.'s target audience is essentially any fan of horror and Halloween, probably leaning towards teens and adults (there aren't any kids sizes on the site).
Overall, this Shopify store is a delight to my eyeballs. They have obviously taken the time to develop a retro/throwback feel to elements all over the site. It is simultaneously spooky but fun at the same time.
Perhaps the spookiest thing on the site is the newsletter sign-up modal that popped up within seconds of me loading the homepage ("Unlock 10% off you order"). I know these things work (they must) but I still don't like the complete take over of the screen. At least the popup was branded to fit in with the look and feel of the site! After I dismiss it, it does reincarnate in different form - as a small box at the lower left of my screen. This is fine as it reminds me that I have the choice to get 10% off, but it doesn't hinder me from browsing.
Shopify makes it easy to swap out themes based on season, holiday, or other promotion.
When I started writing this article, the theme was called "Evil Dead Launch" so they're definitely making use of custom themes. By the next day, the active theme was "Pride Release."
One convenient thing about working with Shopify themes is you can easily enable a specific theme for a promotion or product launch, and then switch the theme back when the promotion is over - or switch to another promotion, which is the case here.
There is a lot going on on the homepage - in a good way. It's a visual smorgasbord of well designed elements (skeuomorphic items like old stickers) and colorful graphics. Down the page we have all sorts of things to dive into:
Though the homepage looks really varied, the majority of the links are to Collections pages, in different formats. Creepy Co. has tons of collections: by property/brand, season, stock status, best sellers, new items, price, apparel type, and so on.
They have around 470 products, so being able to segment them in various ways though collections ultimately helps the end user.
The main navigation offers plenty of ways to get into the product catalog, and even offers a colorful, logo-laden mega-menu that displays for their Collections link.
Creepy Co. has a rewards program (likely done with the Yotpo app, see below), where you can earn "CreepCoins" and move yourself into different VIP tiers. The rewards are incentivized in a few ways: buying certain items, performing certain actions (e.g., sharing on social networks) and via referrals. Gamifying your shop is definitely a great way to create fans and generate repeat visits and interaction.
It's also useful to have the mostly out-of-the-way live chat in the lower right of the site. If someone is around to answer a question, why not make it possible? If someone isn't there, a customer can still post a message which can be answered as soon as somoene is available.
Some of the main Shopify apps installed are:
There are more plugins installed than what we listed here, some of which may be custom, as they aren't able to be easily identified.
It should be noted that Creepy Co. is running on Shopify Plus, which starts at $2,000/mo. It probably costs at least an extra $500-1000 per month for the apps they have installed. This might sound expensive, but for what these apps do, it is a no-brainer if their revenue is truly around $5MM per year.
Product pages have everything a customer could want to know about a product before making a purchase. There is great product photography, thorough descriptions, product reviews, size charts on apparel items, and trust badges, highlighting things like "fast secure checkout", "comfort, fit, & quality guaranteed", and that products are "officially licensed and 100% authentic."
Product page with reviews, numerous images, size chart, and custom icons.
Sold out items remain visible on the site, clearly marked as Sold Out, and with the Add to Cart button replaced with a Sold Out message. I think this is a good move, rather than hiding the products - it can create a sense of FOMO with site visitors, who might think they've missed out. Sold out items also display a "Notify me when available" button so Creepy Co. can collect emails and notify interested people the second a product is available again. A sure way to increase revenue!
Creepy Co. offers a BNPL (Buy Now Pay Later) option with Afterpay. This is becoming quite common, and we've also seen this offered on other Shopify stores with Shop Pay.
In addition to product reviews, there are three other ways Creepy Co. brings products to a user's attention from a product page:
Collections pages are straightforward. The pagination is "load more" style that loads extra items on the current page (which also updates the URL, so you could get back to a "page 2" if you needed to). They offer numerous ways to sort, two display options (large thumbnail or list style), and the option to show more than the default number of items on a page. This is all good for a shop that has hundreds of items.
They have also added user reviews below the product list on their collections pages. You can't have enough social proof!
Creepy Co. makes great use of other pages to add to the customer experience and solidify their brand.
Creepy Company's active blog.
Creepy Co. makes use of the Shopify blog feature, calling theirs the "Ghoul Gazette." This site is their complete online home, unlike some other businesses that have a marketing site at their main domain (that may run on any other CMS, such as WordPress), and put their store on a separate subdomain like "shop." It looks like they post fairly frequently, too, which is great because it's one thing to have a blog or a social channel, but you don't want to neglect it, or you risk giving your potential customers a "crickets" vibe, as if there is nothing going on.
Their blog has plenty of good content, but it is a little strange that their paragraphs are center-aligned. Probably a quick style fix! Shopify's blogging capabilities are a bit more limited than those of a true blogging system, relying heavily on rich text fields. This means images embedded in the posts can be much larger than they need to, which can impact site speed. For example, the blog article column width is only 700 pixels wide, but many of the uploaded images are 1024 wide, and only displaying at 700. The images are reasonably sized, though (e.g., less than 100kb) so the pages still load quickly.
The Members Only Creep Club
Creepy Co. has a "hotline" for no reason other than fun. You call and press a number to hear different things like a scary story, or an "ASMR tale." It's great to see a company simply have a good time and keep the experience of exploring their online store fun without an explicit profit motive attached.
Another fantastic way they create the idea that you might be missing out on something is the "Secret Site" which promises "exclusive discounts, sneak peeks, and digital goodies you can’t get anywhere else." To view this restricted secret site, you need to buy the "Creep Club Kit." There are 70 reviews for the Creep Kit, so it's almost certain that there are many more members of the Creep Club than that.
The cart is modified to show a large banner at the top prompting the user to either sign up for or log into the Reward Program, and same goes for the checkout page, which has a CTA for the Reward Program in the right sidebar. I can't fault Creepy Co. for pushing the Reward Program in so many places, as I'm sure it is essential for customer retention and increasing average order values.
Overall the checkout page is very branded looking - with a faint spooky background image on the right side, too.
Creepy Co. links to three social networks from their footer: Facebook (130k follows), Twitter (8.2k followers), and Instagram (307k followers). Each of these is active, but Instagram takes the cake with a huge following. Creepy Co. does a great job promoting their products on each channel, but you can tell the focus is on Instagram where they have over 4,800 posts!
We could find that they make use of Google Ads (around 20 that we could see) targeting keyword variations of their own name ("creepy co", "creepy company", "creepycompany") and terms like "horror movie clothing", "spooky home decor", and "horror gifts."
They are also doing numerous ads and sponsored posts on Facebook and Instagram (over 40). Makes sense, as this seems to be where most of their customers and fans are hanging out.
There is a lot to like (and emulate!) about Creepy Company's Shopify store. The emphasis on excellent product photography and the sheer amount of effort that goes into the graphic design for every aspect of this shop from collections images to ads is a real delight for the eyes. Fun additions like the Creep Club secret site instill the user with the idea that there is more here than meets the eye, and the fun Hotline is a creative touch that doesn't do anything specifically to drive revenue, but gives the site a branded feel that won't soon be forgotten.
If you have a business with a sense of humor and a unique take on products and apparel you'd like to grow through online sales, Shopify is a great option. You can start with a standard Shopify store, and grow into Shopify Plus if you scale up your sales and customer base. We would be delighted to see how we can help you get started, so contact us today.
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