Kokatat Case Study

For nearly 50 years, Kokatat has built trusted paddling gear from its headquarters near the California Redwoods. As the brand’s online business grew, the team needed a site that could carry the weight of its products: technical gear, custom dry suits, athlete-driven content, detailed product education, and the operational systems behind every order. SwiftOtter helped Kokatat move to BigCommerce Enterprise with Contentful and custom ERP integration, creating a more flexible foundation for selling, storytelling, and long-term growth.

A Site That Had to Earn Customer Trust

Kokatat sells gear customers need to trust before they ever get on the water.

That made the website more than a product catalog. It had to help paddlers understand fit, function, customization, care, and performance, while giving the internal team a better way to manage the systems behind the experience.

As the online business grew, the existing tech stack was taking too much attention behind the scenes. Security updates, performance work, patching, and maintenance were consuming budget that could have been used to improve the customer journey. At the same time, the site needed to support technical product detail, a custom dry suit builder, athlete and expedition content, and a custom ERP connection.

The risk was not just staying on an aging platform. It was letting technical debt limit the brand’s ability to educate customers, sell complex gear, and keep improving the online experience.

What the New Experience Needed to Support

Kokatat needed an eCommerce foundation that could make complex products easier to buy and easier to manage.

For customers, success meant moving through technical product decisions with more confidence. They needed to compare gear, understand fit, choose colors and options, explore athlete content, and build custom dry suits without losing clarity along the way.

For the internal team, success meant spending less time working around the platform and more time improving the experience. Product data, inventory, orders, backorders, content, and customer information all needed to move through the right systems with less friction.

For the business, success meant choosing an architecture that could support growth without adding unnecessary complexity. The goal was not to build the most complicated solution possible. It was to choose the right structure for how Kokatat actually sells.

The Approach

SwiftOtter had supported Kokatat’s digital commerce business for years, which gave the team a clear view of what had changed and what the next platform needed to solve.

The plan was built around clarity and restraint:

1. Reduce the drag of technical debt
   Move to a SaaS commerce foundation that reduced the burden of maintenance, patching, security updates, and performance work.
2. Choose architecture that fit the experience
   Use BigCommerce Enterprise for commerce, Contentful for content, and Knect for ERP integration, giving Kokatat flexibility without the added complexity of a fully headless build.
3. Shape the buying journey around product confidence
   Rework the site structure, taxonomy, mobile experience, and product detail pages so paddlers could compare gear, understand technical options, and move from education to purchase with less friction.

That mattered because Kokatat’s customers are choosing gear based on fit, performance, conditions, and trust. Their site needed to support the decision-making process just as much as the transaction itself.

The Results

Kokatat launched a BigCommerce experience that better matched the complexity of its products and the expectations of its customers.

The new site drove a 77% increase in desktop conversion, a 73% increase in mobile conversion, and a 13% increase in average order value.

Those gains point to more than a successful launch. They show what can happen when technical product detail, mobile usability, content, configuration, and backend systems work together instead of competing for attention.

For Kokatat’s team, the site also created a stronger foundation for future improvement. With BigCommerce, Contentful, and ERP integration working together, the brand could keep building on its digital commerce experience without carrying the same level of technical drag.

The Right Architecture Makes Growth Easier

Outdoor and sporting goods brands often sell products that require confidence before purchase. Customers need to understand fit, performance, use case, care, and compatibility, especially when the product is technical, customizable, or built for demanding conditions.

When a site cannot support that kind of decision-making, the customer experience suffers and the internal team loses time to workarounds. Kokatat’s project shows how the right architecture can support product education, content, commerce, and operations in one more manageable foundation.

For complex merchants, that is the real value of eCommerce strategy. Not adding more technology, but choosing the right structure for how the business actually sells.