Interview with Andreas Hindelang about ODLO's E-Commerce Success

Interview with Andreas Hindelang

Marla: Hello Andreas. Thank you very much for taking the time to speak with me. I’d like to jump straight into the questions. Could you briefly introduce yourself and your role at ODLO?

Andreas Hindelang: With pleasure. I am the Chief E-Commerce Officer at ODLO and responsible for the DTC e-commerce business as well as our marketplace partnerships with Zalando, Sportscheck, and Decathlon.
The core e-commerce team consists of eight people, and we operate the international online shop odlo.com. Our goal is to contribute significantly to the company’s growth and the ODLO brand as both a brand showcase and an online shop.

Marla: Of course, I took a close look at your shop. What would you say makes it special, and what are you particularly proud of?

Andreas Hindelang: I believe we have created a modern and coherent overall experience that conveys the premium look and feel of the brand without neglecting essential e-commerce functionalities—bringing together brand and commerce.
In addition, we have an extremely fast and high-performing shop system, even under heavy load and high traffic, as we are currently experiencing during our Black Friday sale. Our mobile site is also very successful, and the team is especially proud of that.
Of course, there is always room for improvement, but overall we feel that the user experience—combining UI, high-quality products, landing pages, brand campaigns, informative product pages, and a simple checkout—is very successful and commercially effective.

Marla: How did the initial contact with growsome come about, and why did you decide to work together?

Andreas Hindelang: It started with a recommendation and some straightforward online research. In our previous e-commerce system, we had a powerful merchandising tool for sorting product listing pages.
Our new tech stack did not offer this functionality, and the alternatives on the market did not convince us. At that time, growsome offered a corresponding Scayle extension, in addition to an A/B testing module. That’s how the first contact with Marcus and Sebastian came about.
We did not start working together immediately and instead implemented the shop project with another partner. However, it was clear to me that we might reach out to growsome again at a later point, as the chemistry was right from the very beginning—which is exactly what we did.

Marla: Were there specific issues in the shop that you wanted to tackle together with growsome right away?

Andreas Hindelang: Yes, definitely. First, we upgraded the storefront to the latest Scayle version. The advantage was that other growsome clients had already gone through this step, allowing us to benefit from existing know-how, avoid mistakes, and speed up the process.
In addition, we faced technical challenges: for a long time, we struggled with memory leaks. The site was not as performant from the start as it is today, but thanks to growsome’s expertise, we were able to eliminate these issues. We also further optimized the personalization engine directly—since then, it has been running even more stably and error-free.
In September, we started with our first A/B tests. Two tests initiated by Marcus and Sebastian were extremely successful and immediately led to a significant conversion uplift.

Marla: How do you feel about the A/B testing model where only successful tests incur costs?

Andreas Hindelang: For us, this is ideal at the moment. We can run tests on odlo.com without having to make an upfront investment. We leverage the expertise of Marcus and Sebastian, and if a test is successful, growsome is compensated accordingly. For us, this is currently an excellent model.

Marla: Which aspects were most important to you when it came to conversion optimization?

Andreas Hindelang: On the one hand, the underlying technology and infrastructure: Google Cloud setup, server-side tracking—these are the foundations required to run valid A/B tests in the first place.
On the other hand, the execution of the tests themselves. We develop the hypotheses together, but growsome handles the implementation. The solutions are almost turnkey and seamlessly designed and implemented. We only need to approve the test. The quality is truly outstanding, and we are extremely satisfied.

Marla: How would you describe the collaboration after the first 100 days? What positively surprised you?

Andreas Hindelang: We evaluate the collaboration and results as entirely positive and are very satisfied with both the progress and outcomes so far.
We defined a communication framework and exchange regularly several times a week. We also have a shared Slack channel and work together on tickets and user stories via Jira. Communication is efficient and lean, and we achieve very good results with a manageable level of effort.
At the end of October, we held a retrospective where we jointly analyzed sprints and made process adjustments. Since then, things have been running even better.

Marla: What would you say sets growsome apart from other agencies?

Andreas Hindelang: The biggest difference is that growsome is a smaller, owner-managed agency where the decision-makers themselves are directly involved in driving the shop’s success. This is a real advantage compared to large international agencies and also fits ODLO much better as a market leader in the niche of functional underwear and base layers.
We need partners who operate at eye level and share our way of working. With growsome, we have found exactly that: a partner who actively helps shape our growth.

Marla: How do you see the role of CRO and data-driven testing in the future? And do you already have goals for 2026?

Andreas Hindelang: We have clear growth targets. Based on the successful results, CRO and A/B testing will become a permanent part of our e-commerce culture. We will continuously test new features and optimizations to offer our customers an even better, simpler, and more convenient shopping experience.

This interview was done by our employee Marla