How Missouri Star Quilt Company stitched its way to success with an overnight app transformation

Al Doan created Missouri Star Quilt Company (MSQC) 15 years ago for his mom to fulfill her dream. What began as a family passion project has now become a viral brand generating well over a hundred million dollars in revenue, with 400 employees and several retail stores. 

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Today, this crafting oasis attracts a huge online community of quilting lovers, garnering nearly 1 million YouTube subscribers and 90K+ Facebook community members.

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With a dedicated customer base, MSQC was eager to deliver a personalized customer experience that added value at every touchpoint. The team decided the best way to do this was with a mobile app. 

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MSQC launched an app using Reactiv’s AI-powered mobile app platform and saw immediate results. “In just two weeks, we already had about 50,000 users, which is great for us. The app is generating a meaningful chunk of revenue—about 10% of our total revenue—with a slightly higher average order value,” says Al Doan, Founder of Missouri Star Quilt Company. 

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With no active promotion yet, customers are organically discovering, using, and enjoying the MSQC app. “This makes us really excited about the potential when we start thoughtfully designing customer journeys, considering that we haven't even sent a single push notification yet,” Al shares. 

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Things may be looking up for the Missouri-based quilt company now, but this wasn’t always the case. 

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A broken app (that promptly collapsed) from a previous app provider, a complete relaunch with Reactiv, and a commitment to rebuilding customer trust with a delightful experience led them to where they are today.

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The app collapse that changed everything

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This wasn’t MSQC’s first attempt at launching a mobile app. Before launching with Reactiv, the quilt brand worked with a different app development company to build and launch an app that attracted up to 200,000 daily users. 

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The only problem? The app company failed, leaving MSQC in a crisis with no app, no support, and hundreds of thousands of customers to answer to. 

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“We ended up needing immediate midnight support because our app went down overnight," said MSQC.

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Thanks to MSQC’s existing relationship with Reactiv’s team, we were able to quickly jump in and pick up the pieces. In less than 24 hours, Reactiv maintained MSQC’s app presence in the app store by wrapping it with a website and promising to develop a replacement app swiftly. 

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The mission: redefine app engagement

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A fresh start brought on an opportunity to completely transform MSQC’s in-app customer experience. 

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When re-launching with Reactiv, MSQC had a few priorities:

1. Breaking out of a template. 
2. Delivering a better UI. 
3. Rebuilding trust with customers who used the previous app. 

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The first goal was to deliver an app that had an intentional, focused design approach catering to MSQC’s customers. 

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They needed to offer users specific, meaningful interactions rather than overwhelm them with too many different options. It needed to be different from the mobile web experience. 

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“On the website, it can be like Times Square. Pick your poison. Here’s our billboard—we're going to put this all up here, and you guys find what you want. On an app, you pick the thing you want people to click on and give them two or three options in there. You're trying to get them into a journey that's customized for them.” 

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Breaking out of a template meant understanding what is important to the users and designing the app around these priorities. 

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The second goal was to improve the app’s UI. 

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The old app lacked basic navigation features like a back button, which frustrated users (especially considering MSQC offers over 25,000 SKUs). MSQC walks us through a typical customer experience on the old app: 

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“You're trying to find that one pink polka dot with a sailor hat fabric that's going to make the perfect finale to your quilt that you're putting together. You're searching for pink fabric and then you're searching for dots, you're getting in there and you want to look at 20 of them and you're trying to open it up and go back. And they kept being like, ‘There's no back button on your dumb app.’” 

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The new Reactiv app addresses these issues, providing a smoother and more intuitive browsing experience. MSQC wanted a more curated and thoughtful user journey, focusing on guiding users through the most important features and making the experience more personalized and engaging.

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The final and most important step in the relaunch journey was rebuilding trust with customers who used the previous app. When a customer downloads your app, as opposed to just shopping on your mobile site through a browser, they’re demonstrating their loyalty and connection with you. 

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As MSQC puts it, “They're saying, ‘We love you, we want to be with you.’ And then us without an app is essentially saying, ‘look, I'm dating a lot of people, I've got a lot of options out here. You're one of them. Take whatever you can get.’”

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Introducing the Reactiv app was a way for MSQC to reciprocate its customers' love and show them just how much they mean to them. With the improved app up and running, it’s time to let customers know that their shopping experience does matter and MSQC did something about it. 

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The approach: build vs buy

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MSQC had a very clear idea of what they wanted out of their mobile app—and an even clearer idea of what they didn’t want. To build or to buy, though, that was the question… 

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While building a custom solution offered boundless possibilities, it came with additional time and resource demands. Developing a mobile app in-house would require a dedicated team, including Android and iOS developers and a product manager. 

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“If we're building from scratch with that team, it would take us easily seven or eight months to get something out the door, maybe a year, and then we get it out the door and we're maintaining it and the speed of progress is constrained by our ability to ideate and push features,” MSQC shares. 

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MSQC had even successfully launched a previous iteration of a fully custom app, gaining over 5,000 positive reviews. But the team quickly learned how closely the app’s success was tied to dedicated internal resources. 

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Shifting business priorities, lost code bases, and iOS changes lead to the app being neglected over time and eventually becoming obsolete. This revealed just how difficult it is to maintain and update apps internally without a dedicated team.  

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It was time to consider the other option—buying. 

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By using an app development platform, the MSQC team was able to trust that experts would be the ones, “staring at the mobile app every single day and try to make sure it’s as fast as it can be and it’s as shoppable as it can be,” as MSQC put it. And this is what drew them to Reactiv. 

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The MSQC team needed a solution that balanced their needs—minimizing ongoing maintenance while offering customization. 

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Reactiv handles the technical aspects, such as connecting to the store and integrating products, enabling MSQC to focus on enhancing the customer experience without needing a full-time internal development team.

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“We can build a custom experience that makes our customers' lives way better. But still, I'm not in the app business. I get to fix the problems and not hire my three devs to sit in my shop on my payroll and stare at apps all day.”  

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Why not a drag and drop editor then? 

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If MSQC was going for simplicity, you may be wondering why they didn’t opt for a drag-and-drop editor. It doesn’t get simpler than that, does it? 

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The issue with these solutions is brands have to drag their store elements into rigid templates while dropping their brand identity from the experience. 

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“When you think about why an app matters, a lot of it is the customization to your brand. You're trying to build this very authentic relationship. If you're doing that from a templated space where you can't be authentic, you've already misstepped on your very first venture out the door with this app," MSQC explained.

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App customization is crucial to maintaining brand authenticity and delivering brand-specific experiences. As a quilting brand with 25,000 SKUs, MSQC appreciated Reactiv’s flexibility in providing tailored solutions that worked for its customers.

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By working with Reactiv and Domaine, a collaborative Shopify agency, MSQC addresses specific customer needs and issues through its app, without the overhead of in-house development. MSQC introduced unique features that simply aren’t available with competitive drag and drop solutions like Daily Deals, a “Watch” tab with shoppable video tutorials, and App Clips, which they’ve built an entire marketing and advertising flow around.

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The heart of MSQC’s mobile strategy

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There are two cornerstones to MSQC’s app strategy—frequent transactions and customer loyalty. 

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1. Frequent transactions. One half of the profitability puzzle is purchase frequency. The more often a customer shops with you, the more valuable they become. 

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MSQC offers a custom in-app feature known as “the Bundle” to encourage regular purchases. This feature allows customers to hold an order for seven days to add more items, aiming to qualify for free shipping and consolidate shipments. 

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By pairing this feature with its “Daily Deal” offerings, which provide a deeply discounted item each day, MSQC has designed an in-app shopping experience optimized for swift, impulse purchases 

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2. Customer loyalty. When a customer takes the extra steps to download your app, you’re in a great position to leverage and strengthen their loyalty. MSQC is collaborating with Reactiv to develop in-app features that enhance customer appreciation and rewards. 

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Since customers are typically logged in when shopping in-app, it’s easier to create personalized experiences that are difficult to achieve on the web. MSQC works with Reactiv to leverage push notifications for tailored customer experiences, like exclusive access, that boost customer engagement and satisfaction. 

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Features for rebuilding trust

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The quilting brand faced an uphill battle—restoring the customer trust that was lost from its original patchwork app solution that crashed overnight.   

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MSQC knew it had to build an app that was better and actually enhanced the customer experience. Working with Reactiv, they’ve introduced several one-of-a-kind features: 

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• Digital Library Integration: The app will soon feature a digital library for delivering free digital patterns and ebooks directly to users, with push notifications to enhance navigation.
• Wishlist App Integration: A custom wishlist app allows users to save and manage quilt tutorials, products, and collections across devices, ensuring content is backed up in the cloud.
• Cloud-Based System: Users can access their saved content from any device, preventing loss of data and enhancing the user experience.
• Ongoing Feature Enhancements: Plans to improve features like digital downloads, wishlists, and daily deals are underway, with the ability to send timely push notifications based on user activity and product demand.
• Focus on User Experience: The company is committed to enhancing every feature by considering how to improve them beyond their original design.
• Improved Tutorials Experience: The tutorials feature is now more user-friendly, searchable, and connected to related products and patterns, encouraging users to engage with more educational content.

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While still in the early stages of its app deployment, MSQC and its customers are finding immediate value in these features. “It's now easier to search, favorite, and connect products and patterns with tutorials, encouraging users to consume more video content and learn more,” MSQC tells us. 

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The results: user satisfaction soars

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It’s obvious that launching with Reactiv made life easier for the MSQC team, internally. But what did customers think? 

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The changes made in the new app, especially the navigation updates, were well-received by users. The former app lacked a basic “back” button, understandably frustrating customers who were expecting an experience that was at least on par with the web experience. 

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Introducing this small improvement with Reactiv led to big wins. “The number one thing people were excited about when we got the Reactiv app launched was, ‘Oh, we can go back now. I can browse these things and it works. It's so nice. Thank you,’” MSQC shares. “For a very basic win, just the thoughtfulness into a navigation on a mobile screen was a huge win for us amongst others.” 

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Delivering thoughtful design changes like this significantly increased user satisfaction and engagement. 

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The road ahead

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MSQC is committed to continuously enhancing their app, with plans to add more custom pages that cater to their loyal community's needs. By focusing on these personalized updates, they are steadily rebuilding trust and delivering a user experience that surpasses previous iterations.

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Reactiv offers a game-changing solution—effortless, fully customizable, and code-optional mobile apps that are designed to boost Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV). The flexibility of Reactiv doesn’t just stop at app creation; it extends to keeping users engaged with unlimited push notifications, ensuring that your brand remains top of mind. 

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Ready to revolutionize your mobile commerce strategy?

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