visit oribe.com
Global Expansion
Strategy
UX/UI Design
Development
AB Testing & CRO
Shopify Plus
SAP ERP Integration
AI Visibility (AEO)
Retention & Life Cycle
Managed Services
ORIBE: 2.4x REVENUE GROWTH IN 5 YEARS OF PARTNERSHIP

Oribe was born in the salon - founded in 2008 by the legendary stylist Oribe Canales with Daniel Kaner and Tev Finger, built chair by chair into the definitive luxury haircare brand, and acquired in 2017 by Kao Corporation, Asia's largest beauty group, with a mandate to go global.

By 2021, the brand's ambitions had outgrown its direct-to-consumer (D2C) channel: a single-market US store, built on the independent systems of the company Oribe had been - not yet connected to the enterprise it had joined. Kao and Oribe set out to change that, and chose Black & Black as the partner: scale D2C to match the brand, bring the digital operation into the Kao world, and never dilute the salon-born luxury that commands the price.

Five years, side by side

Black & Black Creative x Oribe. What started as one replatform became a partnership across six markets and three sister brands.

Ongoing managed services - enhancements, support, launches, maintenance

2021

Into the Kao world

Full redesign and replatform from Magento to SAP Hybris, integrated into Kao's enterprise-scale business processes.

2023 Q2

Germany first

The Shopify Plus era begins with a global expansion store: optimized business processes, SAP ERP via middleware, Emarsys configured.

2023 Q4

The US flagship moves

Migrated from SAP Hybris to Shopify Plus: enhanced UX/UI, multi-warehouse order routing.

2024

Three markets in a year

Canada (Q1, French and English), the UK (Q2), Sweden (Q4, fully localized with local payment types).

2025

Compounding the experience

UX/UI and navigation refresh, Behind the Bottle editorial, A/B testing and CRO, Salon Finder redesign.

2026

Built for what's next

Major homepage and PDP refresh, AEO work optimizing for LLM search and agentic commerce.

The remit grew

On the strength of the results, Kao expanded Black & Black's role.

Molton Brown · Bondi Sands · Kao Mall
What we built

We led the redesign and migration to Shopify Plus, then built the operating system around it:

  • A five-market architecture across North America and EMEA - localized content and language (including a localized French-Canadian experience that outperforms its English counterpart on AOV), multi-currency, one manageable platform.

  • SAP ERP integration connecting commerce to Kao's enterprise systems, so inventory, orders, and fulfillment run without manual intervention.

  • A lifecycle marketing engine - five automated workflows (browse abandonment, purchase series, winback, replenishment, campaign-driven) that turned email into the brand's core performance channel: 38% of US/CA promotional revenue now comes through it.

  • Salon Finder, a global application connecting Oribe's digital presence to the professional salon network its brand was built on.

  • An editorial storefront carrying the brand's visual language - because for a luxury house, design is not decoration; it is pricing power.
What we keep moving

The launch was the beginning, not the deliverable. As digital partner of record we run a continuous program - structured A/B testing (10+ tests this year), redesign cycles, reporting integrity work, and operations support across all five markets - measured against revenue, not vanity metrics. Recent results from that program:

  • A rebuilt PDP lifted conversion +87% in its first week and net sales +25% against the prior period.

  • A reimagined homepage converted 18% of arrival traffic during the brand's biggest campaign - 60% above the site-wide rate.

  • The brand's largest-ever campaign week: US net sales +35% year on year, orders +60%, conversion up from 7.4% to 11.1% - measured on bot-filtered data, because we fixed the reporting too.

  • Email revenue +27% year on year in the US and +63% in Canada during peak, on the automated foundations above.
The Outcomes

Oribe's global D2C revenue has grown 2.4x across five years of partnership.

The system scaled from one market to five, the testing program compounds conversion year over year, and the lifecycle engine now secures over a third of promotional revenue.

The clearest measure of the results, though, is what Kao Corporation did with them: on the strength of the Oribe partnership, Kao expanded Black & Black's remit across its portfolio - Molton Brown, Bondi Sands, and Kao Mall.

The results compound because the system does - and now, so does the partnership.

2.4X
D2C revenue growth over five years
2021
Digital partner of record since 2021
11.1%
Peak conversion rate
"......from seamless data migration across legacy platforms to multilingual storefronts and modular design flexibility, Black & Black delivered a future-ready ecommerce foundation. Their collaborative approach, attention to detail, and commitment to quality makes them an invaluable partner in our digital evolution."
Dinah Marron, Sr. Director, KAO EIS
"The real measure of this partnership isn't the technology we built or the markets we helped scale into — it's that Oribe stopped managing us and started focusing on their brand. That shift doesn't come from a contract. It comes from years of never letting them down."
Ali Saggu, Head of Enterprise Programs, Black & Black
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