Building a data-centric, digital-first fashion brand is no simple feat.

Cider is reshaping the online fashion space with stylish, affordable clothing, minimizing waste and fostering a strong community of customers.

Cider, the Los Angeles-based global Gen-Z online fashion brand, has experienced remarkable growth in recent years, boasting over 20 million downloads and extending its reach to more than 160 countries worldwide within 3 years. This expansion is attributed in part to Cider’s steadfast commitment to experimentation, powered by Statsig, leading the way in achieving product-led growth.

Developing a competitive edge through experimentation

With their rapid growth and potential for scalability, co-founder and CTO Toney Wen recognized early on that a data-driven approach to product development would set them apart in the fiercely competitive online shopping market. Drawing from his experience at renowned companies with a strong experimentation culture, Toney sought to instill a similar data-driven ethos within Cider. He explained, "Having worked as an engineer at Amazon and Airbnb, I fully grasped the business value associated with conducting large-scale experiments.”

Toney’s goal was to ensure that every new feature had a positive impact on critical business metrics. He remarked, "Rather than engaging in endless debates about ideas such as altering button text/colors or displaying estimated delivery times for products, we aimed to equip our Product and Engineering teams with the tools to test each feature before its release.”

The build vs buy decision

Cider promptly recognized that constructing an in-house A/B testing platform demanded considerable effort and investment. Toney identified a hindrance that was impeding the team’s agility and sought to streamline the burdensome process of conducting experiments, enabling his team to concentrate on feature development.

Toney highlighted the challenge prior to Statsig’s implementation, stating, "Within a week of introducing a new feature, engineers would encounter issues where data reliability or availability was compromised for several days, leading to significant frustration.”

Key challenges of building an in-house platform:

• Inability to define a range of metrics and maintain a single source of truth
• Issues streaming log data
• Unreliable experiment results
• Unfeasible amount of investment to build and maintain the infrastructure

Reasons for choosing Statsig

• Ease of use. “We were able to connect to Statsig with a few lines of code and didn’t even have to speak with Sales to start the trial.”
• Leading the market in terms of capabilities. “When we saw the Statsig dashboard, the sophistication of the platform was evident; the capabilities such as feature flags and experiments is comparable to what you would get at companies like Airbnb.”
• Scalability and stability. ”Statsig beats any other tool in the market.”

”The integration was very smooth and using the SDK was seamless. Jiakan (enterprise engineering team) was extremely helpful in getting things up and running and within a couple of weeks, we were running experiments at scale.”

Toney Wen

Co-founder and CTO, Cider

Driving 3 core business metrics with Statsig

Cider utilizes Statsig to conduct various experiments aimed at enhancing several key metrics that ultimately ladder up to:

• Conversion rate
• Retention rate
• Lifetime value (LTV)

Toney noted, “The standout feature of Statsig is that it empowers every team member to access experiment results, enabling confident decision-making.”

Experimentation use cases

Cider employs a variety of growth experiments using Statsig to optimize their app and website experiences, boosting click-through rates across the entire checkout process, from discovery to payment to tracking. Here are some illustrative examples:

1. Capturing new sales by driving sign-up conversions: 20% increase in sign-ups

To encourage more user account registrations and simplify the purchase process for first-time buyers without pre-existing accounts, Cider utilized Statsig to test a ‘one-time code’ option, reducing friction during the login/sign-up phase of the checkout process. This one-time code resulted in a 20% increase in new user registrations and subsequently drove higher sales.

2. Refining recommendations with the 28-Day Retention metric for long-term success

Boosting customer lifetime value (LTV) through upselling is a key driver of revenue growth for Cider, with personalized recommendations playing a pivotal role. Cider uses Statsig to continually fine-tune their recommendation algorithms to maximize upselling opportunities without negatively impacting long-term retention.

Toney emphasized the delicate balance they strive for, stating, "Personalized recommendations are a critical growth lever for our business, but we must avoid overwhelming users, as excessive recommendations can lead to user fatigue and churn. This is why the 28-Day Retention metric in Statsig helps us build a sustainable, long-term business.”

3. Localizing app experiences to captivate users worldwide

Cider recognized the variations in regional markets and sought to create culturally relevant experiences to resonate with users. Toney elaborated on their scalability challenges, saying, "We face the unique challenge of offering our app in nine languages to users spanning 165 countries. What works in France may differ significantly from what resonates in Germany, for instance.”

Toney provided some examples of features they introduced after conducting experiments. "In Germany, we introduced different payment methods to enhance conversions. In certain countries, we highlighted security features to instill trust, while in others, we underwent a complete homepage redesign to align with the preferences of local consumers.”

4. Identifying and deleting redundant features to improve UI

While introducing successful features, Cider also recognized those that had either a neutral or adverse impact on their top-line metrics. Toney made a perceptive observation, stating, “It’s not always about adding new features; at times, it’s necessary to eliminate non-performing features to achieve a cleaner app interface and enhance the user experience.”

He provided an example: “We initially believed that highlighting shipping speeds from different carriers in the checkout screen (e.g., ‘x days on UPS’ and ‘y days on USPS’) would boost conversions. However, it yielded neutral results on metrics, leading us to remove the feature in favor of an improved UI.” Cider’s product teams generate several creative ideas, subjecting them to testing and making decisions based on their impact on core metrics.

Innovating for Gen-Z with data

Cider has already attained a high level of maturity in experimentation and agile development practices. “All engineers and product managers are integrated into the Statsig platform, and we’ve extended its usage to our data science and design teams as well.” Given that Statsig’s pricing structure doesn’t hinge on the number of users, the entire organization can gain visibility into the impact of their contributions. “Our goal is to make this tool accessible to every member of the Cider team so they can thoroughly assess how these metrics impact their work.”

As Cider’s primary demographic consists of Gen-Z, understanding their customers is paramount to formulating successful product-led growth strategies. Toney’s closing statement underscores Cider’s commitment to a data-driven culture:

"Experimentation serves as the gateway to gaining a deeper understanding of our customers."

Toney Wen

Co-founder and CTO, Cider