BUBS Naturals: Ditching Recharge for Skio
is the health and wellness CPG brand helping folks feel great and do good with
their collagen protein and MCT oil powder. 10% of profits fund
for U.S. veterans.
We sat down with
TJ Ferrara, Co-Founder of BUBS, to hear why he considers Skio one of the best platforms
he’s worked with in over two decades of eCommerce. Discussion topics
include:
How self-service subscriptions can decrease churn
Why Skio feels like a partner, not just a vendor
The value in group discounts and analytics
“Skio staged the smoothest onboarding operation I’ve had in 25 years in eCom. You can tell how much the team cares about their customers. It’s awesome.”
Phase One: Subscription Pain Points on Recharge
BUBS initially launched subscriptions in 2018 using Bold Commerce because, as
TJ recounts, it was simply the easiest plugin they could find at the time.
While the app ran decently well, the team was eventually convinced to migrate
to Recharge for the advertised benefits: custom user portals, upsell and
downsell settings, and so on.
They quickly (and unfortunately) found these perks weren’t the reality.
TJ wound up dealing with Recharge’s faulty tech throughout two Black Fridays
and a year of DTC ops during early COVID. He outlines three of those key pain
points below.
1. Limited Flexibility & Access to Features
Despite the major draw of Recharge’s suite of benefits, TJ realized it was
essentially, in his words, a walled garden. Users couldn’t access most of
these features if they didn’t:
Pay the requisite "egregious" fees
Work with Recharge’s list of 30+ preferred vendors
Or employ a systems integrator or a robust in-house dev team
Through consulting, TJ heard similar complaints from numerous other brands:
Recharge lacks flexibility and customization unless you cough up the extra
bucks.
2. Overwhelming Service Demands
With Recharge, an average of 20–30 users per day (meaning roughly 10% of BUBS’
overall daily volume) reported issues with account access, subscription
preference management, etc.
Both the brand's East and West Coast customer service teams saw a constant
influx and volume of user support requests. As TJ remembers it:
“It seemed like there was nothing we could do to fix the login portal or
Shopify account management or purchase histories. There was always something
going wrong for users.”
3. Unreliability of the Tech Itself
Unlike Skio, Recharge does not support native Shopify checkout — meaning every
BUBS checkout experience was split with a second, external process on the
Recharge platform.
The final nail in Recharge’s coffin came during Black Friday, the busiest
period for DTC eCom across the board, when Recharge’s checkout shut off
entirely.
No new users could subscribe until, after at least ten frantic emails from the
BUBS team, Recharge switched back on around midday.
“Everyone I’ve spoken to has similar complaints: ‘Recharge is just not it.’ It
felt like there was always something broken at any given time, all the
time.”
Phase Two: Discovery, Onboarding, and Migration with Skio
TJ discovered Skio in early 2020 through their solution for a unified Shopify
checkout — something he’d tried hacking together himself while struggling with
Recharge.
He was also amped to hear Skio is a Y Combinator alum, since he'd already
invested in several ambitious, fast-growing YC companies.
Those two reasons were enough for TJ to say, “I trust these guys. Let’s see
what they can do.”
A Low-Stress Migration — On the Road
It took one week to migrate every BUBS subscriber to Skio. TJ outlines the
process for us:
New Interfaces — The BUBS team built out a new UX for subscriptions
Gradual adoption — Existing subscriptions ran on Recharge; new ones ran on
Skio
Validation — They monitored and confirmed Skio’s functional stability across
two days
Full migration — The teams uploaded four Recharge exports to Skio's system
and double-checked for a successful data transfer — all in 45 minutes on a
Thursday
As all of this went down, TJ was actually orchestrating his own move to
Tennessee and working entirely from his phone on the road.
It was a gamble, he admits, but the Skio team held it together
seamlessly.
Immediate Troubleshooting & Support
The morning after the full migration, the teams hit a huge snag: BUBS had
accidentally auto-charged users to the tune of about $54,000 in
subscriptions.
TJ describes waking up in total panic — and then watching Skio unwind the
issue for him by noon that day, in less than three hours. The Skio team:
Rapidly refunded every customer
Smoothly communicated with users about the quick fix through Shopify
Handled the subscription blitz on the backend to ensure it wouldn’t happen
again
Skio's CEO also jumped in, recalls TJ, to assure the BUBS team that this was a
one-off issue they had never seen (and would never see again).
“It’s unreal how quick Skio is,” says TJ of the experience. “I’d never seen
that kind of rapid customer service from any other SaaS company.”
While most vendors provide some 24-hour support through Zendesk, he commends
Skio for immediately assigning bodies to a client emergency at any hour.
“With Skio, the people who actually built the app fiercely support you. You
can raise your hand at any point and have someone toss you a life raft if you
need it.”
Skio Benefit #1: Decreased CS Tickets
Since onboarding with Skio, the BUBS team has seen, in TJ’s words, “a clean
wipe of 100% of the account issues leading to customer service lift.”
He attributes this to the platform’s self-service portal for users, who would
have previously had to email user support to reset logins, delay or cancel
subscription orders, and so on.
Following the implementation, BUBS has received a total of zero emails asking
for basic logistical support — meaning far less strain on their customer
service team.
“Right out of the gate, Skio solved basically all of our customer service
issues.”
Skio Benefit #2: Lower Churn Rates
With Recharge, TJ remembers, it felt like BUBS frequently saw spikes in
churn.
If anything, he says, “It was almost one to one.” For every subscriber they
gained, they lost another, so they often broke even on net monthly
subscriptions.
Meanwhile, after joining Skio, churn rates notably decreased by (so far)
roughly 10%.
TJ attributes this, again, to Skio’s self-service function. Rather than
canceling entirely, users can easily delay their next subscription order
without ever needing to contact a customer rep.
"Skio’s self-service function means users can easily delay their next
subscription order, not cancel it altogether. Churn has already decreased by
about 10%."
Skio Benefit #3: Proactive Client Support
When it comes to client support, TJ describes the Skio team’s proactiveness,
thoughtful client support, and genuine partnership as a rarity in today’s
enablement space.
For instance, a vendor of Klaviyo's size might host, at most, monthly or
quarterly webinars led by junior marketing teams who are solely there to keep
leads going.
Meanwhile, the BUBS team has often worked directly with Skio’s
engineers.
In other words, the people who spend all day building the platform you use are
also helping you solve issues — because they’re actually invested in your
success. This means:
Skio’s response time for support requests is about 15 minutes max
Every request goes through direct email — no Zendesk or other routing
systems
The Skio team suggests high-ROI tactics that they’ve seen throughout their
client base
"We’re super happy with Skio’s client support. They respond to requests within
15 minutes max. It’s unreal. They’re a vendor, but this feels like a true
partnership."
Skio Benefit #4: New Feature Deployment
As for the platform itself, TJ highlights three of his favorite Skio
features.
1. Fluid Customer Comms
Skio's customer communications function, in his words, continues to blow him
away.
The platform’s pre-populated content and variables are easily adjustable with
radio buttons, rather than having to rewrite or reformat from top to bottom,
as was the case with Recharge.
The pre-written messaging is solid, so TJ only made a few changes to the
default before BUBS was ready to go. “It was super easy in terms of migrating
and setting up our business cases.”
2. Robust Data Analytics
Skio partners with
to power subscription analytics. TJ calls the data platform “bananas good” and
“a rad company” for two key reasons:
Speed — While Recharge always lagged by 40–50 seconds while reporting,
Skio's quick analytics enable the BUBS team to easily and rapidly spot-check
data.
Depth — Skio pulls many more detailed KPIs and metrics than Recharge would,
especially if, like the BUBS team, you hadn’t integrated a BI tool.
3. Group Discounts
From day one, TJ was ready to push Skio’s group-buy feature. Today, one of
these key clients is
Street Parking, an online workout program and community with 35,000+ active global
members.
They've been beneficial for both individual and recurring purchases, as
members choose to link up for discounts up to 45% on group
subscriptions.
Even more, if someone drops out of a group buy, Skio automatically raises
individual pricing — and vice versa if someone new joins.
"Compared to the unreliability of Recharge, the way Skio smoothly automates
complex cases like group subscriptions on their backend is super rad."
