Stead Lane clears way for eCommerce companies to sell

THIS is the digital agency behind a number of our local eCommerce success stories such as HiSmile. And chances are, you’ve never heard of them.

Stead Lane directors Adam Stead and Flynn McFarlane at their digital marketing agency in Southport; the company generated about $1 million in turnover last year. Picture: Mike Batterham

BEING local has worked well for Stead Lane.

The digital agency, founded in 2011 by Flynn McFarlane and Adam Stead, works with high-profile Gold Coast companies. They include teeth-whitening product provider HiSmile, action sports clothing e-tailer SurfStitch, functional foods company Morlife and apparel and headwear firm the May Hueys.

For Mr McFarlane, 30, and Mr Stead, 36, the key was sensing opportunities early in the eCommerce space.

The pair were among the first in Australia to see the benefits of eCommerce platform Shopify and recommend it to their clients.

They then aligned their services and products so it fitted with the Shopify platform.

“Growth for us since 2013 has been a lot to do with Shopify,” said Mr McFarlane, who is also president of Young Professionals Gold Coast.

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“It enables businesses to operate at a level of multimillion-dollar eCommerce businesses with minimal investment. The previous barrier to entry for small business was they had to spend $200,000 to $500,000 getting an eCommerce platform set up to generate sales. Now they can look at something for a tenth of the cost.”

But it wasn’t just Shopify that helped the business grow to $1 million in turnover in six years. The business is proudly Gold Coast-based, and they found other local businesses wanted a local firm specialising in eCommerce.

“SurfStitch contacted us as they were looking for local eCommerce providers. They were pumped we were here.”

Mr McFarlane and Mr Stead met while the former was studying at Griffith University and doing freelance marketing work.

Mr Stead, who studied at Griffith University prior to Mr McFarlane, had a background in web development. The pair decided they could combine their skillsets into a business.

“Adam has the technical background and I have the marketing background,” Mr McFarlane said.

“We saw a gap in the market, certainly in the early stages, to mould the two together to get the best for clients.”

They leased a 72sq m office above retail space in Chevron Island and soon were doing work for clients including education provider Navitas.

However, it was work they did with content management system provider Silverstripe early on that was a game changer.

“Aligning with Silverstripe enabled us to generate a lot of business and grow. We specialised in that platform so people who used that would come to us,” Mr McFarlane said.

They moved to a 130sq m office in Southport in 2014, and it was there that the business really started to take off.

The engaged with Shopify from 2013 and landing clients, including SurfStitch and Hi-Smile, changed the business.

“HiSmile came to us at a time when they were needing to swap platforms,” Mr Stead said.

“They were using Wordpress so we put them on to Shopify. They had the issue with running sales.

“They were causing massive disruption to the website and they couldn’t get sales through, because the website was down.

“The advantage with Shopify is capacity is huge. Now they are able to do sales and pull in huge amounts of money without the fear of disruption.”

Stead Lane recently joined the Shopify Plus Partner Program, which enables closer contact with the Shopify team.

Mr McFarlane said the program will allow the business to grow further.