Passenger Scales to £87M After 60-Day Setup with Brightpearl and Shopify

Background

Scaling to £87M in global sales within five years is something most retailers can only dream of.

But for Passenger, the outdoor clothing brand founded in 2012 on the UK’s South Coast, it’s been a real-life journey.

With visionary CEO Jon Lane at the helm, the brand has gone from strength to strength – with support from Brightpearl by Sage, the retail operating system chosen by top retailers across the globe.

“In 2019, we were turning over around half a million and predominantly a B2B business,” says Jon.

“By 2024, we’d hit almost £90M and grown into a global brand doing 90% of its business via DTC. It’s been an amazing ride.”

That success didn’t happen by accident. Soon after Jon joined the company, he and his team refined the brand’s product offering and zeroed in on its core customer and understanding their needs.

But rapid growth brought operational headaches. Passenger was relying on spreadsheets to manage an increasingly complex business, and it wasn’t sustainable.

Jon says: “We were growing fast, but our operations couldn’t keep up. We knew we needed something more powerful at the core of the business, but I’d used Netsuite in previous jobs and I knew it was a 2-3 year project to get it implemented and we didn’t have time for that.

“Brightpearl was quicker to set up and better all round for us at this point in our journey.”

Plotting the route to smoother operations

Brightpearl’s standout features – like its powerful no-code Automation Engine, market-leading inventory planning and advanced reporting – were exactly what Passenger needed.

Thanks to a unique, expert-led approach to implementation, the brand was live in just 60 days – in stark contrast to traditional ERPs which typically take 420 days to set up.

Jon adds: “We had a tight deadline because we were moving 3PL. We really needed to get focused and Brightpearl delivered.”

Brightpearl has become the single source of truth for all Passenger’s operations, especially inventory and purchasing.

Inventory Planner, the market-leading tool which is included with Brightpearl, offers reliable, always-up-to-date demand forecasting. It then translates these forecasts into simple,easy-to-understand buying reports.

“We’re a stock-based business. We needed one place to manage POs and inventory, and Brightpearl gives us that. The stock value is the biggest number on the balance sheet—we need to have full confidence in it.

“Any e-commerce business is only as good as its data. Brightpearl is our master of inventory.”

The team can now pull accurate data, build custom reports, and make decisions with confidence. Features like the audit trail ensure cost prices, duties, and currency allocations are all tracked accurately across geographies.

The view from the top

Another win? Seamless scalability. As Passenger expands into the EU, Brightpearl lets them launch new distribution channels without hiring an army of developers.

Brightpearl’s plug-and-play integrations connect smoothly with Passenger’s existing tech stack, including Shopify and Xero. And thanks to unlimited user seats, the whole team can access the platform.

“Brightpearl and Shopify work so well together. The Shopify platform enables us to continue to scale fast and deliver great products with a strong user experience and Brightpearl backs this up as our connector to our fulfilment operations.

We really liked the composability – being able to connect to the tools we need, when we need them.”

“Brightpearl’s automation setup has been really helpful. Orders are routed correctly, and only exceptions need manual review. It saves us a tonne of time and eliminates information silos.”

“Shopify Markets has been a game changer for us too. It has enabled us to quickly deliver country-specific stores, to test and validate our assumptions and the user experience for individual countries without the complexity of expansion stores. The rollout of Markets’ features has helped us to keep up the pace of growth in these new countries.”

 “As our complexity scales, we know Brightpearl will scale with us.”

– Jon Lane, CEO, Passenger

Today, 40% of Passenger’s business comes from outside the UK, and that number is only going up.

The company has its sights set on a new warehouse in the EU as it continues to grow into an omnichannel, global brand.

Jon adds: “As our complexity scales, we know Brightpearl will scale with us.”

Find out how Brightpearl and Inventory Planner can help your business grow with a free demo.