Urban Expressions: Digital Transformation Through Strategic Collaboration

Founded 18 years ago by Farbod Shakouri, Urban Expressions was built on the mission of delivering luxury vegan handbags and accessories to fashion-forward consumers. Over time, the brand secured partnerships with many major retailers such as Macy’s, DSW, Bloomingdale’s, and Nordstrom, solidifying its place in the competitive accessories market.

To strengthen its presence in the digital space, Shakouri entrusted Coalition Technologies with Urban Expressions as well as their sister company, Sol and Selene. Together with Growave, the team focused on enhancing site conversions, increasing customer retention, and driving organic social traffic, initiatives that have helped elevate the brand's online performance and reach.

Urban Expressions needed to evolve from a primarily business-to-business (B2B) model by strengthening their direct-to-consumer (DTC) strategy. This shift required a modernized digital presence tailored to online shoppers and scalable for long-term growth.

To meet these goals, Urban Expressions partnered with Coalition Technologies and Growave to build a robust digital strategy centered on SEO, PPC, site optimization, and loyalty marketing. Urban Expressions required a complete website overhaul to resolve accessibility and usability issues, while also improving conversion rates, driving organic traffic, increasing repeat business, and enhancing performance across key digital channels.

Coalition quickly began redesigning the Urban Expressions’ Shopify website to align with the brand’s business goals. Initial assessments revealed uncovered ADA compliance and user experience issues, such as a blocked homepage banner and poor search functionality. The team addressed these by improving navigation, enhancing calls to action (CTAs), and highlighting user-generated content powered by Growave.

In partnership with Growave, Coalition optimized site functionality and SEO performance by implementing schema markup, which allowed Google to display rich snippets including review stars, product rating, and improved visibility in Google Shopping, the Google Merchant Center, and organic search results. They also added rating values in the site’s code so that these could appear in search results alongside product prices.

To further boost search engine performance, the team created an HTML sitemap, resolved XML sitemap issues that had affected indexing, and published keyword-optimized copy on the site.

As Shopify partners, Growave and Coalition have a proven track record of helping clients boost sales and enhance their websites. With Growave, Urban Expressions tracked referrals, loyalty performance, and reviews - insights Coalition used to boost promo visibility, add upsells, feature reviews, and highlight the Instagram feed. To build trust and drive conversions, the team also added footer icons like “Shopify Secure” and “Secure SSL Encryption.”

Urban Expressions’ loyalty program was integral for improving customer retention and DTC revenue. Growave helped Urban Expressions create a custom, trackable loyalty program within Shopify. Coalition helped design a refreshed homepage that spotlighted the rewards program with updated icons, optimized copy, and a standout banner. The fun, trendy design paired with dynamic CTAs was crafted to engage the target demographic and boost conversions.

During Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the team launched a timely campaign featuring countdown timers and promotional banners to generate urgency and boost seasonal conversions.

Growave makes it easy for clients to build interactive and unique Instagram galleries right on their sites. For Urban Expressions, Coalition designed a homepage that seamlessly featured this feed, using engaging, keyword optimized copy.

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Customers who redeemed loyalty points showed:

The Growave - Coalition partnership was instrumental in transforming Urban Expressions’ DTC performance. By combining Coalition’s expertise in SEO, PPC, and site optimization with Growave’s loyalty and social commerce tools, the brand achieved remarkable improvements in traffic, revenue, retention, and engagement.

This case study is a strong example of how strategic collaboration - supported by the right technology stack can drive sustainable growth, elevate brand engagement, and build meaningful customer relationships.