A subscription-first store for Echelon energy drinks

Echelon is a veteran-founded, zero-sugar energy drink brand that sells by the case on Shopify Plus, with Subscribe & Save on its core flavors. Much of its calendar runs on drops: limited collaboration flavors that sell out, then go away.

The store wasn't built for either. The cart was a heavily customized legacy drawer with no clean way to offer a subscription or an upsell. Every drop page and sold-out state was edited by hand. On email, the list was healthy, but nothing in Klaviyo was built around subscriptions or drops.

Echelon brought DYODE in under one statement of work covering Shopify development, CRO and UX design, and email marketing.

Development runs as a retainer against Echelon's own phased roadmap, which leans heavily on conversion work. Each ticket is estimated and approved before it starts. Progress is reviewed in bi-weekly meetings that also cover a ranked list of CRO, accessibility, and performance fixes.

Email started with an audit of Echelon's Klaviyo account, which became a step-by-step action plan led by subscription retention. Since then DYODE has run the email calendar: campaigns, flows, segmentation, templates, and monthly Klaviyo reporting.

DYODE retired the legacy cart and rebuilt the drawer on AfterSell's UpCart, with a custom product tile written in React and TypeScript. Each line item carries a Skio toggle, so a shopper can switch a one-time case to a subscription without leaving the cart.

The drawer also adds a free-shipping progress bar, best-seller upsells, and a branded empty state. The subscription call-to-action text can be changed by Echelon's team without a code release.

Limited flavors now launch from a reusable drop landing page and PDP template, with out-of-stock handling built in and gated early access for the brand's drop list.

For limited-time subscription drops, the PDP runs itself from date metafields and metaobjects: a countdown, then a subscription-only window, then one-time purchase, then a sold-out state. Nobody has to edit the page at each step.

When Echelon launched in Vitamin Shoppe, DYODE added an Aisle-powered store locator so shoppers can find Echelon at their nearest Vitamin Shoppe. DYODE also built the application page for Echelon's first-responder free-case program, with gated access.

Smaller releases came off the CRO list: a restyled Skio subscription portal, an accessible consent checkbox in the cart, a sticky footer call-to-action, a duplicate Google Tag Manager container removed, and Visually.io loading deferred. DYODE also audited product metafields ahead of Echelon's NetSuite integration.

DYODE redesigned Echelon's email templates and runs the campaign calendar around the drop schedule: flavor launches like Pink Mist and Goth Girl Blood, collaboration drops, and first-responder giveback sends, plus MMS sends.

On the automation side, DYODE built drop purchaser and notify-list flows, reworked the welcome flow and signup popup, cleaned up Klaviyo profiles, and built a custom email reporting dashboard for Echelon's team.

Every line in Echelon's cart now offers a subscription, and a drop can go from countdown to sold out without anyone touching the theme.

Development, CRO, and email run as one engagement, so a flavor launch ships as a page, a cart, and a send planned together.