How Monte Carlo drove 126% revenue growth with Shopify Plus

Overview

Monte Carlo started as a winter wear label in India in 1984, and today is a leading fashion brand with over 1,400 stores. Its online channel made up more than 11% of total revenue, but a legacy platform limited the user interface and growth potential. Heavy coding requirements slowed down feature builds and pushed up hosting costs during sales peaks on AWS. Page load delays, complex checkout, and unclear promotional messaging hampered sales and customer engagement.

The Challenge

The team relied on Laravel for their e-commerce site. Every change required developer time and extensive testing. Even adding a clear banner for a 10% cashback offer felt like a major task. The multi-step checkout process drove traffic away, while built-in upsell or cross-sell tools were absent. Hosting on AWS meant unpredictable bills that rose up to 24 times during the winter season, and the site would sometimes crash when customer traffic spiked.

Implementation Process

Mojito Labs worked closely with Monte Carlo’s tech and marketing leads to plan the migration. They mapped existing workflows, product catalog, and custom features to Shopify equivalents. Data was exported via Matrixify and imported into Shopify in batches. Themes were customized with Liquid, using minimal edits to keep maintenance simple. Custom CSS tweaks aligned the look and feel to Monte Carlo’s brand identity. Throughout the build, a staging environment allowed real-time testing with QA before going live.

Migrating to Shopify Plus

In late 2023, Monte Carlo partnered with Mojito Labs and migrated to Shopify Plus in just four months. The move gave them a cloud-native infrastructure, removing the need to manage AWS hosting. They chose a prebuilt Shopify theme that offered responsive design and reduced page load times. The one-page checkout feature simplified the purchase path, cutting cart abandonment. Built-in upsell and cross-sell components allowed personalized product recommendations without writing custom code.

Platform Advantages

Shopify’s native cloud hosting meant auto-scaling under the hood, so traffic surges no longer threatened downtime. The platform’s app ecosystem provided a ready supply of vetted integrations, from email marketing to loyalty programs. Because most features are built in or delivered via apps, the Monte Carlo team could deploy updates in hours rather than weeks. Regular platform updates are handled by Shopify, ensuring security and performance patches arrive automatically.

Key Improvements

• Implemented one-page checkout, reducing steps in purchase flow.
• Deployed native upsell blocks to surface related items instantly.
• Used Shopify notifications to highlight a 10% cashback popup that applied automatically.
• Switched from AWS to Shopify cloud hosting, eliminating server crashes and cost spikes.
• Added apps from Shopify App Store—Matrixify for data, Flits for wishlists, Retafy for loyalty.

Results

Within three months of launch, Monte Carlo saw online revenue jump by 126% and transactions climb by 115%. Returning customers rose 493%, driven by a slick interface and clear incentives. Server costs were cut in half and surprise bills from peak traffic went to zero. The ROI on developer time improved as customization no longer meant lengthy code sprints, freeing the team to focus on marketing and new features.

Next Steps

With a stable, fast site and lower operating costs, Monte Carlo plans to enhance international engagement through faster shipping options, virtual fitting experiences, and deeper personalization. The brand sees Shopify Plus as a flexible foundation to introduce new features and expand into new markets without massive dev effort.

Conclusion

By transitioning to Shopify Plus, Monte Carlo turned a rigid, custom-built site into a fluid, user-friendly store that scales automatically. The leap in revenue and customer loyalty shows how user experience and infrastructure choices can drive measurable growth. This case study demonstrates that investing in the right platform frees resources to focus on customers and new markets.