How Bulk Nutrients Flexed Its Ecommerce Muscles with BigCommerce

Introduction

Bulk Nutrients began in 2008 as Bioflex, a modest home‐based protein powder operation founded by Ben Crowley. Over time, demand exploded and the team realized their existing platforms—Adobe Business Catalyst and then Neto—could not keep pace with performance, scalability, or native functionality. The search began for a solution that offered flexible templates, robust integrations, and future‐proof APIs to fuel growth.

The Challenge

For nearly seven years, the brand juggled two separate ecommerce systems that created bottlenecks at every turn. Slow backend workflows kept the team tied to manual tasks, while limited templates and clunky integrations hampered SEO and design flexibility. As categories multiplied and sales accelerated, Bulk Nutrients needed a platform that could handle heavy traffic loads, advanced merchandising, and seamless connections to ERP, accounting, and marketing tools.

Choosing BigCommerce

BigCommerce emerged as the clear winner—far more robust than Shopify yet more streamlined than Magento. Immediately, the out-of-the-box Handlebars and Stencil themes delivered clean markup and SEO enhancements, while the growing ecosystem of plugins enabled quick plug-and-play integrations. The responsive design templates delivered a uniform mobile experience, and local partners assisted in a smooth migration.

Headless Transformation

In late 2021, Bulk Nutrients took its platform a step further by adopting a headless architecture. BigCommerce’s REST and GraphQL APIs power the custom front end and a Sanity CMS back end via serverless functions, enabling real-time cart updates and content delivery. This decoupled approach maximizes speed, personalization, and developer autonomy, while still leveraging BigCommerce’s robust commerce engine.

Results

Since migrating, Bulk Nutrients has achieved a 326% increase in monthly users (May 2015–July 2022), a 52% lift in conversion rate (June 2015–June 2022), and a staggering 2,892% growth in organic SEO keywords. The company enjoys 99.98% uptime, streamlined backend workflows, and the agility to test new experiences. Webmaster Jarod Pulo credits Klaviyo segmentation and Zendesk efficiency for elevating customer engagement.

Looking Ahead

Building on this momentum, Bulk Nutrients plans to roll out a customized checkout experience that further personalizes the purchase journey. By combining BigCommerce’s native features with strategic third-party integrations, the brand aims to create a world-class online store that delights customers and drives continued growth.