The Brand

The Aje Collective is an Australian fashion powerhouse that brings together three unique brands: Aje, Aje Athletica, and Aje Studio. The Aje Collective drives a single vision of effortless style interwoven with striking statement pieces, brought together through beautiful, contemporary design. Each brand speaks to a different aspect of the modern wardrobe, from statement fashion to activewear and everyday essentials.

Recognizing that its customers often shop across multiple brands, The Aje Collective consolidated its ecommerce presence under a single domain, ensuring a seamless and well-tailored shopping experience. This move mirrors the brand’s approach in physical retail, where select stores now house all three brands under one roof. As The Aje Collective continues to expand, it maintains a strong focus on curating highly personalized and integrated online shopping journeys that align with elevated in-store experiences.

The Challenges

With three distinct customer groups, The Aje Collective was gathering significant data about what those customers wanted from the brand. However, its previous ecommerce tools did not shed enough light on how to connect customers with the right products consistently and effectively.

Shoppers using search terms that didn’t perfectly match product descriptions often led them to “zero results” pages, causing frustrating search experiences. Without in-depth insights into search behaviors, The Aje Collective was also missing conversion opportunities.

Additionally, the merchandising process was highly manual. With hundreds of categories, merchandising needed hours per week of dedicated time to sort collections while maintaining Aje’s signature aesthetic.

The Solutions

By implementing Searchspring on its Shopify store, intelligent on-site search has not only been a game-changer in helping customers find their perfect products faster; it’s also brought deep insights. Rhyanna Cardillo, Acting Head of Ecommerce at The Aje Collective, and her team have made timely gains by diving into Searchspring’s keywords and search query data. Rhyanna explains, “We frequently review our top keyword reports, which can sometimes tell a different story than what we anticipated. This allows us to make informed optimizations across the site. For example, if we see searches for red dresses spiking leading up to Lunar New Year, it could be an opportunity to feature an event-driven collection on the homepage or create a specific campaign.”

These insights have also led to the implementation of new categories. Aje had an existing collection of wedding guest dresses. However, after seeing an increase in searches relating to this occasion and purpose, the data revealed an opportunity to create a standalone subcategory. Rhyanna continues, “Conversely, our ‘zero search results’ reports also paint a picture of what we may be missing. If we’re seeing an increase in product searches that we don’t have a category for—or even if we had a category that previously sold out—we can use that to inform strategic business decisions.”

For shoppers, product badges bring quick attention to items while driving a better experience. While some products are tagged as “New” to build excitement over just-arrived garments, others may include an “X% Off” for sale items or a “Runs Small” or “Runs Large” badge to help customers understand sizing directly from the search results and collections pages.

While badges draw attention, inline banners also promote product discovery. The Aje Collective uses video banners to showcase the movement and styling of garments and quickly connect shoppers with more products. These inline banners have been critical for sale periods and cross-brand promotion, highlighting sales events and building awareness of parallel Aje brands.

With a single domain now encompassing those multiple brands, it’s more important than ever to ensure the relevance of recommendations. Searchspring’s personalized product recommendations consider browsing behaviors and on-site context when serving up suggestions. “If you’re an Aje Athletica customer looking for activewear, you don’t want to be shown gowns at that point in your buyer journey,” explains Rhyanna. “Searchspring has helped optimize these recommendations for each customer across our brands.”

Searchspring’s merchandising has become another powerful tool in The Aje Collective’s ecommerce strategy. Rhyanna notes that a mix of global and individualized merchandising rules have been set up to promote and demote certain products in an automated but granular way. She details, “We heavily rely on Searchspring to do the heavy lifting for us. We set up boost rules using data like how long the product has been out, revenue per product, in-stock percent, and a lot more. We also really lean into the Searchspring tech to pull from certain tags to boost certain products. I love the ability of Searchspring to mix and match different criteria within its algorithms and promote the products that best match how we want our targeting to work.”

Additionally, geo-merchandising ensures customers in different regions see seasonally and geographically relevant products. With shoppers across Australia, New Zealand, the U.S., and the rest of the globe, location is key to highlighting the right products at the right time. For example, Melbourne shoppers will be far more interested in blazers, jackets, and coats during Autumn than those in Brisbane. Rhyanna notes, “It’s so important to show the right product to the right customer and make it relevant to not only who they are but also where they are.”

Continuing the data-led approach, The Aje Collective actively uses A/B testing to experiment with Searchspring-powered merchandising strategies, including testing product cards, image dimensions, quick add-to-cart functionality, and more.

Rhyanna also makes note of Searchspring’s hands-on approach with helping to set up experiments, troubleshoot issues, and communicate with their external partners and agencies. “We’re always coming up with new tactics and ideas that we want to prove with data,” she says. “Our customer support managers have been amazing at talking us through how to set up experiments and different functionality and extending it across our different regions. They’ve also been great in liaising directly with our agencies to clarify how the tech aspects all work together.”

The Results

Since implementing Searchspring, The Aje Collective has seen significant uplifts in conversion and average order value (AOV) across its brands. In 2025, The Aje Collective has seen:

• 2-3 full days per week in time savings from leveraging merchandising automation
• An impressive 10% of revenue coming from personalized product recommendations
• 8.5x greater revenue per visit from search-driven activity vs. without search
• 8.2x higher conversion rate from search-driven activity vs. without search

Beyond the numbers, Searchspring has also empowered The Aje Collective to identify and react to trends in real time. Whether responding to sudden spikes in searches for seasonal colors or time-sensitive trends like tennis-inspired fashion during the U.S. Open, the team has the data and insights to optimize site experiences and instantly meet rapidly changing customer preferences.

As Rhyanna points out: “Ecommerce moves fast. But tools like Searchspring give us the ability to test, learn, and pivot in real time. And that’s really the key to staying ahead in fashion.”

With Searchspring deeply embedded in its ecommerce strategy, The Aje Collective is continuously optimizing its personalization efforts and enhancing cross-brand shopping experiences—without needing to do the heavy lifting. By continuously refining its approach based on real-time data and customer insights, the brand ensures that every shopper finds what they need and discovers more of what they’ll love.