A sports or outdoor store breaks the shortcuts a fashion template relies on: one jacket in six colourways and nine sizes, a boot in wide fits, gear sold as kits, a new season that has to go live at nine on a Thursday, and clubs, schools and dealers who buy at a different price from the person on the sofa. The agencies worth hiring have shipped those problems before, and the good ones say who for. Every agency below earned its place because its own website names a sports, fitness or outdoor client; we read those pages on 10 October 2026, in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, and kept only what each one publishes. We have placed our own agency at the top and labelled it; the other ten are described only from their own websites.
The short answer
What is the best Shopify agency for a sports brand? The one that has built your kind of store. If you want one senior team, a Shopify Plus build and the scope and price settled in writing before you commit, start with us, Aqsa Shahzad Official: the Plus store we built for the Gene Juarez salon group gets a visitor from any landing page to a booking in under a second. If you want published numbers, Avex shows the strongest set on this search, led by a 168% conversion-rate lift for the activewear label Balance Athletica. If dealers and teams order beside your direct customers, Shero Commerce moved the lacrosse and hockey maker STX onto one Shopify store for both. In Australia, Convert Digital publishes results for 2XU, Rusty and Mizuno. In the UK, Swanky is the only agency here with a page built around football-club commerce.
Key takeaways
- Ten agencies below name sports, fitness or outdoor clients on their own sites: five based in the US, two in the UK and three in Australia. Six publish a number for at least one of those clients; none prints a build price.
- The sport-specific questions are about catalogue and timing: size and colour matrices, one listing per style across colourways, scheduled drops, kits, and separate prices for clubs and dealers. Several of those features are Shopify Plus only, so ask which ones the agency has actually switched on.
- Two agencies claim Shopify Plus work for the same brand, 2XU, and one case page shows template placeholder figures above its real ones. Ask every agency for the numbers in writing.
Agencies based in the United States
Aqsa Shahzad Official — USA (our agency)
Best for: sports, fitness and outdoor brands that want a custom Shopify or Shopify Plus store, with fittings, lessons or classes bookable next to the gear, from one senior team that settles the scope and the price before any deposit.
Figures on our case-study pages:
- Under one second from landing page to booking for Gene Juarez, a 13-location salon and spa group in Washington whose retail products and bookable services share one custom Shopify Plus theme connected to Zenoti. How we built it
- 1.4 s page speed on PawGuard, measured and verified on the fully custom Shopify store we launched in July 2026 for a new Irish pet brand from Cooney’s Group. How we built it
- Revenue up 22% for OuchieCap, an inventor-led brand of children’s comfort products whose custom theme and second label, OuchieSnuggles, we have built and looked after for three years. How we built it
Where that meets a sports catalogue: we plan the size and colour matrix around Shopify’s variant limits before any import, group colourways with combined listings, schedule drops in Launchpad, sell kits through Shopify Bundles so each component’s stock moves, and give clubs, schools and dealers their own price catalogues on Shopify Plus B2B. Our case studies do not include a sports, fitness or outdoor brand yet; the figures above come from a salon group, a pet brand and a children’s brand.
Pricing: launches and replatforms are quoted at $40,000 to $100,000; once a Plus build takes on integrations the range is $100,000 to $200,000. You get the scope and the figure in writing before paying anything (packages page). Book a call to walk us through your range and your next drop.
Avex — New York
Best for: activewear, surf and swim brands that want measured conversion gains from a Shopify Plus redesign or a pre-holiday sprint on search and speed.
Describes itself as a Platinum Shopify Plus agency in its own page title. It has no sports landing page, but it publishes the most sports and fitness numbers of anyone here: a Shopify Plus redesign for Balance Athletica, with back-in-stock flows and a pre-launch countdown page, credited with a 168% higher conversion rate and 22% higher order value; a new Shopify Plus site for the surf brand O’Neill, with conversions up 25%; and a pre-holiday sprint on search, filtering and speed for the swimwear brand TYR, whose fourth-quarter 2025 revenue rose 25% year on year. It also lists retail work for Equinox, without a result. avexdesigns.com
Shero Commerce — Red Hook, New York
Best for: equipment makers selling to dealers and distributors beside direct customers, and brands built around limited releases.
States Shopify Platinum Partner status and runs dedicated sporting-goods and fitness-equipment pages. Its lead case is STX, the lacrosse, field hockey and ice hockey maker, moved from Adobe Commerce to one Shopify store that handles dealer and distributor ordering beside direct sales, with ecommerce revenue reported up 200% since the partnership began. A theme rebuild for the golf brand Swag Golf, built around limited releases with countdowns and order limits, is credited with a 28% rise in mobile conversion. It also lists offices in the UK, Finland and Albania, so ask where your build team sits. sherocommerce.com
SLTWTR — California
Best for: multi-brand action-sports groups with retail doors that need several sites on one shared codebase.
A stated Shopify Platinum Partner that specialises in action sports. Its largest case is Boardriders: Billabong, Quiksilver, Roxy, RVCA and Honolua moved from Salesforce Commerce Cloud to Shopify on one shared codebase, ten sites and more than 400 store locations in the first phase, with separate stores for the US, Canada and Australia. The case pages describe scope rather than sales figures. The fit for a multi-brand group with retail doors. sltwtr.com
First Pier — Portland, Maine
Best for: outdoor and fitness brands that want a Shopify Plus move with checkout upsells, a pro programme and a wholesale channel.
Has its own fitness and sports page and a long relationship with the ultralight backpacking brand Hyperlite Mountain Gear, which it moved to Shopify Plus with checkout upsells, a pro programme and a wholesale channel, reporting 90% company growth in the first year. It also lists a weightlifting-strap brand, Versa Gripps, and a three-store outdoor retailer wired to Lightspeed. The Hyperlite page shows template placeholder statistics above the real ones, so ask for the figures in writing. firstpier.com
DigitlHaus — Miramar Beach, Florida
Best for: outdoor brands leaving NetSuite SuiteCommerce for Shopify Plus.
One outdoor client, but a well-documented one: the rain-gear brand Frogg Toggs, migrated from NetSuite SuiteCommerce to Shopify Plus, with conversions up 194% and orders up 200% on its case page. It also builds on BigCommerce. Its own site describes its Shopify partner level in two different ways, so we do not repeat either. digitlhaus.com
Agencies based in the United Kingdom
Charle — London
Best for: equipment brands that sell branded kit to schools and need product personalisation.
A certified Shopify Plus Partner, with no tier stated, working on equipment brands sold to schools as much as to players: custom Shopify Plus themes for Gilbert Rugby and the cricket brand Gray-Nicolls, both with search tuned for schools ordering branded kit and with product personalisation. It also runs ongoing conversion work for the bike-care brand Muc-Off, including a product page tested against the old layout. The results on that page load through script rather than as text, so ask for the test report. charleagency.com
Swanky — UK and Australia
Best for: football clubs, and cycling or outdoor brands that need club stores, kit personalisation or gated B2B stores.
Says it is a Shopify Platinum Partner, has offices in the UK, Australia and France, and the only agency here with a page about sports-club commerce: Newcastle United’s Shopify Plus store, built with partners, with a kit-personalisation app, single sign-on and point-of-sale advice. It also built gated B2B stores for the cycling distributor Saddleback and moved the outdoor clothing brand Saltrock to Shopify Plus. Its one published number, revenue up 42% for a Cornish camping shop, dates from a 2018 migration on standard Shopify. swankyagency.com
Agencies based in Australia
Convert Digital — Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane
Best for: sports brands running sites in several countries, or selling custom products such as surfboards and club fittings, with an Australian team.
Lists itself as a Shopify Platinum Partner and publishes more sports results than any other Australian agency here: Shopify Plus rethemes for 2XU’s Australian, New Zealand, US and Canadian sites, credited with a 29% higher conversion rate in the first 45 days; a replatform for the surf brand Rusty with a build-your-own surfboard tool, with revenue up 44%; and Mizuno’s move to Shopify with a stockist finder filtered by sport and bookable golf-club fittings. convertdigital.com.au
Flux — Melbourne
Best for: brands selling in many markets that want localised prices from one back end.
A Shopify Plus Partner, with no tier stated, and teams in Los Angeles and London. It lists a global Shopify Plus rebuild for 2XU, with localised prices across markets from one back end, and a redesign across six international stores for the phone-mount brand Quad Lock, which sells to cyclists and runners. Neither case publishes a result. Convert Digital also claims 2XU work from 2021, so ask each which phase it owned. flux.agency
76CREATIVE — Perth
Best for: Western Australian brands that want a small local studio, including for course or class enrolment.
A small Shopify Plus Partner studio in West Leederville that designed the Shopify Plus store for the training-grip brand Frog Grips and built a course-enrolment platform for a basketball academy that also sells gear. No published numbers. The local option for Western Australian brands. 76creativestudio.com
What a sports or outdoor store needs
- A catalogue model before the import. Size, colour, length and width multiply quickly, and Shopify limits how many variants one product can carry. Decide how styles split before anything is migrated.
- One listing per style across colourways. Brands want each colourway findable on its own and one product page with swatches. Shopify’s native way to do this, combined listings, is a Shopify Plus feature.
- Drops that go live on time. New-season kit and limited releases need prices, visibility and theme changes to switch at a set minute. Launchpad does that on Plus.
- Kits with real stock. Starter sets and gear bundles should draw down each component’s stock, which is what Shopify Bundles handles instead of a fake bundle product.
- A finder built on product data. Buyers narrow by sport, level, size and specification; filters that run on metafield-based search and discovery are what a product finder is made of.
- Club, team and dealer prices in the same store. Per-company price catalogues are part of B2B on Shopify Plus, so a club secretary and a retail customer can buy from one site at different prices.
Selling into the US, the UK and Australia
- United States. Prices show before tax, and sales tax applies state by state once you cross each state’s threshold. Cycling helmets are a regulated product under the CPSC standard, so keep the compliance details in the product data.
- United Kingdom. Consumer prices must include VAT, and overseas brands sending parcels of £135 or less charge UK VAT at checkout. Outdoor stores selling knives or bladed tools need age checks and hand-to-adult delivery.
- Australia. Displayed prices must be the total including GST, and overseas sellers collect GST on goods of A$1,000 or less at checkout. Afterpay (Clearpay in the UK) is tied to the store’s region, so offering it in all three markets usually means regional stores.
What to ask a sports agency
- Show me your biggest variant problem. Ask for a live store with a deep size and colour matrix, and how the products were split to stay inside Shopify’s limits.
- Which Plus features did you switch on? Combined listings, Launchpad and B2B catalogues are why many sports brands pay for Plus. Ask which ones the agency has configured, not just which it knows about.
- How did the last drop go? Ask what happened at launch minute on a limited release: traffic, stock holds, bots and order limits.
- Who buys at a different price? If clubs, schools or dealers order from you, ask to see a store where they do, logged in, beside retail customers.
- Which of your numbers can I check? Ask for the result behind each case study in writing, and which phase of the work the agency owned.
Side by side
| Agency | Based (per its site) | Sports and outdoor clients named | Published result | Partner level it states |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aqsa Shahzad Official (ours) | USA | None in sports yet | PawGuard 1.4 s page speed | — |
| Avex | New York | Balance Athletica, O’Neill, TYR, Equinox | Balance Athletica +168% conversion; TYR Q4 revenue +25% | Platinum (Plus) |
| Shero Commerce | New York; UK office | STX, Swag Golf | STX ecommerce revenue +200%; Swag Golf mobile conversion +28% | Platinum |
| SLTWTR | California | Boardriders: Billabong, Quiksilver, Roxy, RVCA | Scope only (10 sites, 400+ stores) | Platinum |
| First Pier | Portland, Maine | Hyperlite Mountain Gear, Versa Gripps | Hyperlite 90% growth in year one | Partner |
| DigitlHaus | Florida | Frogg Toggs | Conversions +194%, orders +200% | Not repeated (inconsistent) |
| Charle | London | Gilbert Rugby, Gray-Nicolls, Muc-Off | Ask for the Muc-Off test report | Shopify Plus Partner |
| Swanky | UK and Australia | Newcastle United, Saddleback, Saltrock | Camping shop revenue +42% (2018) | Platinum |
| Convert Digital | Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane | 2XU, Rusty, Mizuno | 2XU conversion +29%; Rusty revenue +44% | Platinum |
| Flux | Melbourne | 2XU, Quad Lock | — | Shopify Plus Partner |
| 76CREATIVE | Perth | Frog Grips, a basketball academy | — | Shopify Plus Partner |
Next step
Pick three, send each one the five questions above, and judge them on the written scopes that come back. For the wider field, read the 12-agency comparison and the hiring guide; for how we scope and price a build, see our Shopify Plus development services.
