If You Haven't Looked at Workstand Lately, You Haven't Seen Workstand

Ask a shop owner what Workstand is, and the answer you get often depends on when they last looked. For years, plenty of retailers thought of us as "the website company," the place you got your site and your catalog and not much else. If that's still your mental picture of Workstand, I'd like to update it. We've invested heavily in the platform, and today's Workstand is a fundamentally different thing than the one shops signed up for even a couple of years ago.

Before I get into what's new, I want to say thank you. Everything on this list exists because independent bike dealers trusted us with their business and told us, candidly, sometimes loudly, what they needed. That partnership is the whole reason we build.

The Rebuild You Never Saw

None of what follows happened by accident. A decade ago, the application behind your website was a monolith built on technology from another era. It worked, but it was hard to improve, expensive to maintain, and never going to carry independent retailers where commerce was heading. So starting in 2018, we made a decision that shaped everything since: rebuild the platform piece by piece, converting it into modern services one section at a time, all while more than a thousand shops kept selling on it every single day. Imagine changing a tire while the car is driving down the road. 

Almost none of that work ever got a feature announcement, because infrastructure doesn't demo well. But here's what it adds up to: more than $100 million a year now transacts on Workstand websites. And that number tells only half the story. For every completed online order, there are countless sales that start on your website and finish at your counter. The shopper who checks your inventory Tuesday night and walks in Wednesday morning. The customer who researches a bike on your site for two weeks before coming in to ride it. Your website isn't just a sales channel; it's the front door to your shop, and it's working even when the doors are locked.

the new checkout, Conversations, smarter shipping, these shipped as quickly as they did because of that foundation. Features that would have taken years on the old architecture now take months. The rebuild wasn't instead of new features. It's why they're finally coming this fast.

What's New:

• Checkout, reimagined. Let's start with the moment that matters most: the sale. Our old checkout asked too much of shoppers, too many steps, and an account just to complete a purchase. The new checkout is the seamless, modern flow your customers already know from the biggest names in e-commerce: Google Pay, Apple Pay, and PayPal right alongside standard payment, no forced account creation, and fewer steps between "add to cart" and "thank you for your order." Less friction for the shopper means more completed sales for you.

   

• A faster, cleaner platform. Beyond any single feature, the whole platform is quicker and easier to use than it was a year ago. Pages load faster for you and your customers, and the interfaces you work in every day have been streamlined and modernized throughout. Speed and clarity don't get their own announcements, but they're often what you feel first.
  
  

• Sales Hub. If you've ever wrestled with the old order screens, this is the one you've been waiting for. Sales Hub is the rebuilt home for managing your online business: every sale in one filterable list, full editing after a sale is placed, real-time inventory and supplier availability right inside the order, and a clear view of payment and fulfillment status at a glance. It also connects your online sales to the in-store tools you already use, so you can text a customer, take a payment in person, or start a special order without leaving the sale. It's rolling out to clients now, and for a lot of shops it's going to become the first tab you open every morning.

• Conversations. Your customers text. Now your shop can text back, two-way SMS messaging with customers, built right into the platform. Answer a question, confirm a pickup, close a sale, all from the same system that runs your store.

• Affirm financing. Buy now, pay later is live in checkout, fully integrated and seamless. For considered purchases like bikes, giving shoppers a financing option at exactly the right moment can be the difference between a browse and a sale. 
  
  

• Shipping by category. Shipping rules used to be blunt instruments tied to dollar amounts. Now you can configure rates and rules by product category, because shipping a jersey and shipping a bike are not the same job, and your rates shouldn't pretend they are.

• Abandoned cart customizations. Abandoned carts are some of the easiest revenue you can recover, and you now have far more control over that messaging, what it says, how it sounds, and how it represents your shop when it goes out.

• Meta catalog feed and advertising services. Your product catalog can now sync directly to Meta, powering dynamic ads and shopping placements on Facebook and Instagram. Pair that with our advertising services and your inventory starts working for you in the feeds where your customers already spend their time.

• Digital Advisor Services. Not every challenge in retail is a software problem, so this year we added a human layer to the platform. Our Digital Advisor Services bring real consulting and guidance to shop owners, led by David Martinez, an industry veteran whose experience has already proven to be a huge asset to the shops working with him. Software plus judgment is a powerful combination. Learn more at workstand.com/advisory-services.

• New website packages and premium themes. We've also introduced new website packages, built around everything above, and a set of modern premium themes that make your storefront look as current as the commerce engine now running underneath it. If your site predates this generation of the platform, this is the moment to take a fresh look.

The Throughline

Every item on this list points the same direction: a decade of continued, compounding investment in a platform built specifically for independent bicycle dealers. Not a generic e-commerce tool with a bike section bolted on, but a platform that understands how this industry actually works, backed by people who care whether your shop wins.

To our IBD partners: thank you for your trust, your feedback, and your business. We're not slowing down. There's more coming this fall, and I can't wait to show you.