Goal: Allow customers to pay-over-time with financing alternative that is transparent.

With impressive confidence and a now-or-never mentality, Bag Riders' CEO Will Fisher led his booming auto aftermarket business through a major transition that few online retailers have the guts to undertake. He simultaneously switched to the Magento e-commerce platform and integrated with Affirm, a financing solution that gives consumers the flexibility to buy now and make simple monthly payments for their purchases.

“Honestly, the timing wasn’t ideal—but it never is,” said Fisher. “You can always find an excuse: ‘I’m in the middle of an overhaul.’ Or, ‘I need to revamp my website copy.’ But by not waiting to offer Affirm to our customers, we were able to seize the moment and generate some awesome results really quickly. I have no regrets.”

Affirm’s impact on Bag Riders’ business

To many, Bag Riders—with its Air Ride suspension product—is one of those esoteric businesses catering to the passions of extreme auto enthusiasts: 18-to-30- year-old men who live to trick out their rides, investing a tremendous amount of time, money, and soul into what ultimately becomes an extension of their personal identities.

But don’t be too quick to judge this loyal and cultish crew—modifying cars is a huge and expensive industry. According to the Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA), automotive lifestyle enthusiasts will spend well over $39 billion this year, to publicly demonstrate their love for their cars, trucks or SUVs.

Fisher and his team of air suspension experts are well aware of the opportunity, and are positioning themselves at the forefront of this market.

Bag Riders’ integration with Affirm is one of those trend-setting moves that puts them at the head of the pack. Fisher chose an implementation of Affirm that instantly calculates monthly payment prices for individual items, enabling shoppers to see available financing options while shopping and before they checkout.

Affirm increases sales & revenue for Bag Riders

“With Affirm, shoppers see that a $4,000 purchase can become $351.66 a month for 12 months based on a 10% APR for approved customers. Our customers can more easily visualize their monthly budgets versus paying out one large, lump sum. These guys were putting their purchases on cards, which for a lot of them ate up their credit lines,” said Fisher.

With Affirm, the results were evident just 24 hours after activating the service. By the end of the first month, the positive impact on his business was unmistakable. During what is traditionally Bag Riders’ slowest sales month of the year, Fisher chose to use Affirm’s 0% APR promotion in hopes of avoiding the lull. It definitely paid off. Average order values popped a respectable 4.2% from $1,995 to $2,080. Conversions increased from 0.93% to 1.25%. And—what some might argue is the best indicator of all—top line revenue jumped 37% year over year for the same period.

I wish we had known about Affirm years ago—we would have had this incremental growth all this time,” said Fisher. “But as they say, hindsight is 20/20. At this point, I’m just glad we found Affirm when we did. Not only has its transparency and honesty been apparent to our customers, but it has seemed to answer a real need for them as well—they’ve jumped on the financing super fast.”