How Pineapple Dance Studios Skyrocketed Sales by 207% with Shopify Plus

Background

Over decades, Pineapple Dance Studios built a reputation for quality training and a signature fashion line. With its London campus and high-profile guests, its brand carried weight. When it added commerce online, growth was blocked by outages, slow pages and high maintenance fees.

Team morale dipped each time the site crashed during peak hours. The in-house platform required constant patches, and any small content change would trigger a dev ticket that cost over a thousand pounds.

Challenges

Technical hiccups cost hours each week. Adding a new menu item took a full dev day and around £1,300. Weekends or sale events triggered site crashes. Reporting tools barely delivered data. Team members wasted hours on support and fixes, instead of focusing on growth.

Solutions

To solve these issues, Pineapple kept the same easy Point of Sale system in-store and moved its website onto Shopify Plus. Partner agency Underwaterpistol handled the migration, mapping every integration—Klaviyo for emails and Shipwire for fulfillment—while preserving SEO rankings. They built a custom timetable app, so class schedules load instantly and admins can update times without extra costs.

Underwaterpistol also made sure that product images and customer accounts moved safely. They tested the new site under simulated sale conditions to catch any bottlenecks before going live.

Results

In two months, sales climbed 207%. Average page load dropped from five to three seconds, a 40% speed gain. Developers no longer charge fees for simple tweaks, freeing funds for marketing efforts. The site stayed live through high-traffic periods, and the team could add promotions or new collections in minutes.

The migration also cut backend complexity. Pineapple can now scale inventory updates across channels, and checkout failures dropped to near zero. Customer support tickets related to site errors have fallen sharply.

Next Steps

Now, Pineapple is exploring local pickup through its Covent Garden studio, streaming classes with Pineapple LIVE, and partnering on new collections with Hello Kitty and “The Next Step.” Future plans include deeper use of data tools, social marketing push and expanding international shipping options.