Hardware-Plus-Membership Commerce for a Connected Rowing Brand
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Overview
What we built
A connected rowing brand sold through 15 showrooms and a growing web store, but its checkout was built for one-off purchases and could not sell the membership that made the hardware worth owning. We rebuilt checkout as one subscription-native flow, and membership attach rate rose from 61% to 89%.
In plain terms: this brand sells a connected rower, but the real value for a customer is the ongoing content membership that comes with it, the classes and programming that make the machine worth using every week. The old checkout could only sell the rower itself. Buyers could not add the membership, choose instalment financing or book a delivery slot in the same order, so staff had to set the membership up manually after the sale, and that manual step got skipped often enough that many new rowers left the showroom, or finished checkout online, without ever activating a membership at all.
We rebuilt commerce around a subscription-native checkout that bundles the rower, instalment financing, delivery scheduling and the content membership into a single order, whether a customer buys online or in one of the 15 showrooms. Recurring billing handles trials, pauses and plan changes, and a dunning engine automatically retries and recovers failed card payments instead of quietly losing the member. Membership attach rate on new orders rose from 61% to 89% once the bundled checkout launched, involuntary churn from failed payments fell by 44%, checkout completion improved 18%, and all 15 showrooms were processing orders through the unified system within three months of rollout.
The Problem
Checkout couldn't sell the membership
The brand sells rowers through 15 showrooms and a growing web store, but the checkout underneath both channels was built years earlier for one-off hardware purchases. It had no concept of a subscription, no way to attach financing, and no way to schedule delivery, because none of that existed when the checkout was first built.
That gap forced a workaround: buyers completed a hardware-only checkout, and staff added the content membership, financing terms and delivery scheduling by hand afterwards. Every one of those steps depended on a person remembering to do it, in a showroom or behind the scenes on a web order, and that dependency was the whole problem.
The manual step got skipped often enough to matter, in busy showrooms and just as easily on the web store. A large share of new rowers walked away, or clicked through checkout, without a membership ever being activated, which meant the hardware sale closed but the recurring relationship that made the rower worth owning in the first place never actually started.
One-off checkout only
The checkout could only process a single hardware purchase, with no way to attach a membership, financing or delivery scheduling in the same order.
Manual membership setup
Staff had to activate the content membership by hand after every sale, a step that depended entirely on someone remembering to do it.
Two checkout channels
15 showrooms and the web store both ran the same limited checkout, so the same gap in memberships, financing and delivery showed up everywhere.
Members never activated
A large share of new rowers never had their content membership switched on at all, closing a hardware sale but not the actual relationship.
What it was costing them
Every unattached membership was a rower shipped without the ongoing relationship that makes it worth owning, and every one of those depended on a manual step across 15 showrooms and a web store that was easy to miss under normal selling pressure. Failed card payments on the memberships that did activate then went unmanaged, quietly eroding the subscription base the checkout was supposed to be building.
The Solution
Unified hardware-subscription checkout
We rebuilt commerce around a single subscription-native checkout, so the rower, instalment financing, delivery scheduling and the content membership all sit inside one order instead of being handled as separate steps. Showroom staff use the exact same flow on tablets that the web store uses, so an in-showroom sale and an online sale land in one system rather than two.
Recurring billing runs trials, pauses and plan changes as native parts of the checkout, not a manual afterthought, so a membership set up at the point of sale keeps working the way the customer expects it to. A dunning engine sits behind that billing, automatically retrying and recovering failed card payments before a member is quietly lost.
Because the same checkout flow runs everywhere, every showroom and the web store now sell the rower the same way: hardware, financing, delivery and membership together, in a single order, with nothing left over for a person to remember afterwards, and nothing that only happens if the right staff member is on shift that day.
Key decisions
One order, four components
The rower, instalment financing, delivery scheduling and the content membership all live inside a single checkout order instead of separate manual steps.
Same flow for showroom and web
Showroom staff check out customers on tablets using the identical subscription-native flow the web store runs, so in-store and online orders land in one system.
Recurring billing built in
Trials, pauses and plan changes run as native billing states rather than manual edits, so a membership behaves the way a customer was told it would.
Automated dunning for failed payments
A dunning engine retries and recovers failed card payments automatically, catching members who would otherwise have churned silently after one bad transaction.
Measurable Impact
What changed after launch
The bundled checkout changed what happened at the point of sale: membership attach rate on new rower orders rose from 61% to 89%, meaning most buyers now leave with an active membership rather than a hardware purchase that might later get a membership added, or might not.
The automated dunning engine cut involuntary churn from failed payments by 44%, and checkout completion improved 18% once financing and delivery scheduling stopped being separate hurdles. Within three months of rollout, all 15 showrooms were processing every order, hardware and membership together, through the same unified commerce system.
Membership attach
61% of new rower orders attached a membership
89% of new rower orders attach a membership
Payment churn
Failed card payments went largely unmanaged
Involuntary churn from failed payments cut by 44%
Checkout completion
Financing and delivery handled as separate hurdles
Completion improved 18% in a single bundled flow
Showroom rollout
Showrooms ran a hardware-only checkout
All 15 showrooms unified within three months
Headline results
Membership attach rate on new rower orders rose from 61% to 89% after the bundled checkout launched
Involuntary churn from failed card payments cut by 44% through automated dunning and card-updater flows
Checkout completion improved 18% once financing and delivery scheduling moved into a single flow
All 15 showrooms processing orders through the unified commerce system within 3 months of rollout
Tech & Tools Used
What powered the build
Every tool below earned its place in this engagement. Here is the part each one played.
Next.js
Powers the customer-facing storefront and the subscription-native checkout, rendering the same bundled flow for showroom tablets and the web store alike.
Node.js (NestJS)
Runs the backend services that assemble each bundled order, coordinating the rower purchase, financing terms, delivery scheduling and membership activation behind one checkout.
PostgreSQL
Stores the unified order, subscription and customer records that both showroom tablets and the web store read from and write to.
Stripe Billing
Handles recurring billing for the content membership, running trials, pauses and plan changes, and driving the dunning flow that recovers failed card payments.
Redis
Caches checkout session state and product availability so the bundled flow stays fast whether a customer is at a showroom tablet or online.
Segment
Collects checkout and membership events from showrooms and the web store into one customer timeline used to track attach and churn.
Klaviyo
Sends the lifecycle messaging around the membership, including the recovery emails that back up the dunning engine when a card payment fails.
AWS ECS Fargate
Hosts the checkout and billing services, scaling to handle order volume across all 15 showrooms and the web store without dedicated servers to manage.
Terraform
Provisions the commerce infrastructure as code, so the same environment stood up cleanly as the unified checkout rolled out to every showroom.
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