Training has never looked, or felt, so good. That’s what the loyal customers of ASRV have come to expect from one of the top men's activewear brands on the market today. It’s right there in the name: ASRV, which stands for All Season Recreation Versatility, and since 2014 this brand has been synonymous with apparel that not only helps you perform at your athletic best, but also sets a new standard for aesthetic design in the activewear industry.

The Brand

“The core pillars of ASRV's product offering are 'Run, Train, Rec' – where rec represents both recovery and recreation,” explained David Chang, Chief of Staff & Special Projects. “ASRV is a technical apparel brand that develops best-in-class training gear for high-performance athletes. We make functional training apparel with subtle streetwear-inspired designs, and we use high-quality, innovative materials in our products. For example, we have the world’s first fitness-focused apparel made with Outlast®, a fabric technology originally developed by NASA.

David has been with ASRV since the early days when there were just five employees. Today, they boast over 70 as they continue to move from strictly DTC to having three retail locations in Beverly Hills, Venice, and New York; with plans to open more in 2024. And where they go, their customers follow.

“ASRV has a premium price point because we are creating the future of training apparel, merging tech fabrics with versatile designs,” said David. “It’s best-in-class performance apparel.”

“But we’re not just about the physical, but also about mindset training. Apparel is no longer just a means to an end. Rather, it represents a philosophy of life; a celebration of an individual's pursuits and the journey we choose. Our aim is not only for you to achieve your physical goals but to experience a complete elevation of mind, body, and spirit. We call it the Relentless Pursuit.”

The Pain Point

As ASRV grew in both footprint and audience, the team quickly realized that they were spending an exorbitant amount of time pulling reports from their ecommerce platform.

“Shopify is robust, however there are some reports that they just don’t have that you’d think they would have,” said David. “We ended up not being able to pull the reports we wanted. And Shopify is time consuming when trying to pull reports on specific products. You need to manually type in each color, each style, each size; there’s just a lot of manual pieces that take up time.”

“For us, it was a no-brainer to try 42. They got us up and running in days to test it out, integrate into Shopify; it was Erica and the customer service experience that really got us to move forward with 42.”

Like David said, it took less than a week to get ASRV using 42, giving the team access to the useful standard reports that Shopify doesn’t have, while making it easy for them to request custom reports that saved them even more time.

“The reporting features in 42 are extremely detailed. It can do more than Shopify’s reports, and if we can’t find a report we can reach out to our main rep and they will make that report for us. And when we present that report to create in 42, then all their other clients can use that report as well.”

The Results

“Per project, we are saving hours every time. Literally, we are saving hours each time we use 42 for our data analytics,” said David. “Calculating size breaks, pulling sell-through data on all sizes and styles; in Shopify that would have taken hours. In 42, we have an answer in thirty seconds.”

“42 allows sell-through analysis, velocity – meaning percent of units going out the door in comparison to how long they’ve been live, sell-through view on only new customers,” listed Ethan Frame, Director of Growth Marketing at ASRV. “We’re always creating other segments specific to our retail needs in the grid view.”

“I’ve used other analytics tools in the past, like Looker,” Ethan continued. “A data specialist had to set that up, but 42 was easier. It’s not as daunting; you can get to what you need, you can add views like year vs last year, or revenue attributed to certain products. 42 seems like it was custom built for this type of analysis.”

Ethan provided an example of a particular crisis event where 42 saved the day.

“We had a shipment by boat that was going to be delayed, which meant we were potentially going to not have a product in time for its launch date. So we jumped into 42 to do a quick analysis on whether it made sense to ship a percentage of the product by air to get them in quicker.”

“42 showed us the sell-through on a collection the previous year, and using that data we had a good idea on how much inventory we needed to tide us over until the boat shipment could arrive. So it was no longer a guessing game, and we had a successful launch.”

“The ROI is in time saved and mistakes avoided,” affirmed David. “Another example is that we need to know what to restock in our retail stores each week, which used to be a manual process. What I love about 42 is that we set up automated reports that shoot out an email with an attachment of what each store needs to restock. One and done. Again, it’s all about hours saved. We no longer have to pull these time-consuming reports all the time.”

The Service

The ASRV team came for the data, but stayed for the customer service… and the data.

“42’s customer success team, they were more than responsive,” said Ethan. “Nothing but good things to say about them.”

“Big shout out to Erica,” David said. “She was always very attentive, hopping on calls. She provided one of the best onboarding experiences, and I’ve onboarded with a lot of different companies.”

And would ASRV recommend 42 to other retailers?

“100% without a doubt,” said David.

Thanks to David and Ethan at ASRV for making the time to chat with us!