How Onward Helped Solgaard Consolidate Its Post-Purchase Stack and Drop the SaaS Fees

A Sustainability Brand Built on High-Value Hard Goods

Solgaard makes premium travel gear: suitcases, backpacks, and everyday carry built from recycled ocean-bound plastic. Sustainability isn't a marketing layer on top of the catalog; it's the material the products are made of. That positioning attracts a customer who pays a premium and expects the brand to mean what it says, from the checkout page to the box on the doorstep.

It's also a demanding business to run after the sale. Luggage and bags are bulky, valuable, and easy to damage or lose in transit. Solgaard sells direct on Shopify at high order values, so every parcel is a high-ticket item moving through a delivery network the brand doesn't control, and every return is a large item coming back the other way. For a brand like this, the post-purchase experience carries as much weight as the product page.

The Challenge

One Customer Journey, Two Vendors

Solgaard switched to Onward for order protection in November 2025. Customers opted into Checkout+ at checkout, and the order upgrade covered loss, theft, and damage on the way to them.

Everything after checkout lived somewhere else. Order tracking and returns ran on AfterShip, which meant a separate system, a separate data set, and a separate subscription on the P&L. A Solgaard customer would add protection through Onward, follow their shipment on an AfterShip tracking page, and start a return in an AfterShip portal. Three moments in one customer's journey, handled by two vendors that didn't share a view of the order.

That split is common, and it's structural. Most brands assemble their post-purchase stack one point solution at a time: protection from one vendor, tracking from another, returns from a third. Each tool solves its own problem and bills its own fee. The cost shows up as software spend, and the gaps show up in the experience, where the brand promise gets handed off between platforms at exactly the moments a customer is paying closest attention.

The Starting Point

An Order Upgrade That Pays for Itself

Consolidation only makes sense if the platform can carry the extra products, and Solgaard's protection results made that case on their own.

Since launch, Solgaard has run Checkout+ at a 66.67% attach rate across more than 31,000 upgraded orders. Two out of every three customers choose to add the upgrade. That adoption reflects who Solgaard sells to: a customer who chose a brand built on recycled ocean-bound plastic is already thinking about the journey the product takes to reach them, and the upgrade speaks to that directly. The same opt-in also funds carbon offsetting on each shipment, which has removed roughly 47 tonnes of CO2 and funded close to 780 trees since November 2025.

That revenue is what powers the rest of Onward's platform. Onward carries zero SaaS fees because Checkout+ funds it. Once Solgaard's upgrade was generating revenue on two-thirds of its orders, tracking and returns stopped being two more subscriptions to budget for. They became products the brand's existing program could pay for.

The Solution

Tracking and Returns, Rebuilt on the Same Platform

Solgaard is moving its tracking and returns off AfterShip and onto Onward, so protection, tracking, and returns run as one integrated stack.

On the tracking side, customers follow their order on branded Onward tracking tied to the same order record that holds their protection. On the returns side, Solgaard is rolling out Onward's returns and exchanges, so a customer who needs to send something back starts that return from the same platform that protected the shipment on the way out.

The practical change is continuity. One platform now sees the order from the moment the customer opts into Checkout+ through delivery and, when needed, back through a return or exchange. Solgaard's team works from one system, and the customer stays inside one branded experience from checkout to return.

The financial change is simpler. Tracking and returns carry no SaaS fee. The subscription Solgaard paid for those services comes off the P&L, and the replacement is funded by an upgrade customers already choose to buy.

Why a Performance-First Stack Beats a Collection of Point Solutions

The case for consolidating is bigger than the saved subscription.

A point-solution stack is built around features. Each vendor ships its own piece and optimizes for it, and the brand ends up stitching the pieces together. Onward approaches post-purchase from the other direction: start with the economics, fund the stack from revenue it generates, and build every product on a shared view of the order. That's what performance-first means in practice. Every product in the stack either generates revenue, protects it, or keeps a customer coming back, and Checkout+ covers the cost of running all of them.

For Solgaard that matters most at the moments that decide whether a customer buys again. A returns flow that offers an exchange keeps revenue with the brand that a straight refund sends away. Branded tracking keeps "where is my order" questions off the support queue and keeps the customer on a page Solgaard owns. Protection that resolves problems quickly turns a bad delivery into a reason to trust the brand. Each of those is a retention lever, and they work better when they share one platform and one customer record.

The Results

One Platform, No Fees, and an Engine Already Running

The headline result is structural. Solgaard started with protection on Onward and tracking and returns on AfterShip. It is moving all three onto Onward, with no SaaS fees for tracking or returns and one integrated view of every order.

The numbers underneath it show why the move holds up. A 66.67% attach rate on more than 31,000 orders means the majority of Solgaard's customers are funding their own protection, and with it the tracking, returns, and carbon offsetting that sit on top. The program pays for the stack that delivers it, which is the only reason consolidating onto a single platform can also mean removing a line from the P&L.

With returns rolling out, Solgaard's next chapter runs on the same foundation: one checkout decision funding the entire post-purchase experience.

Takeaways for Premium DTC Brands

Solgaard's switch points to a few lessons for any brand running its post-purchase experience across several vendors.

1. Start where the revenue is. Solgaard proved Checkout+ first. A strong attach rate is what turns consolidation from a cost exercise into a self-funding one, because the upgrade pays for the products you move onto it.

2. Count the whole stack. Tracking, returns, and protection each look affordable as a single line item. Added together, and with the handoffs between them, they add up to a meaningful cost in both software spend and customer experience. Evaluate the stack, then the tools.

3. Consolidation compounds into LTV. When protection, tracking, and returns share one platform, every post-purchase moment becomes a chance to keep the customer: offering an exchange on a return, showing a branded tracking page, resolving a delivery problem quickly. That's the path from a single order to repeat purchases, higher retention, and more contribution margin per customer.