The making of A Subscription-First Shopify Store for a Monthly Fitness Box

The Barbell Box ships a monthly fitness box across Canada and the US. We rebuilt their Shopify store around the subscription — plans, portal, reviews. See how.

Client: The Barbell Box
Built with: Shopify, Liquid, Dawn Theme, Recharge Subscriptions, Judge.me, Klaviyo, Gorgias

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A Subscription-First Shopify Store for a Monthly Fitness Box — the delivered interface

Challenges

A store with a single product has nowhere to hide: the product page has to carry acquisition, plan selection, objection handling and social proof at once, which is why the plan selector, the first-box discount, the four-point reassurance list and the reviews all sit in one column above the fold
Subscription revenue lives or dies on churn, so the store had to make skipping and pausing as easy as cancelling — a self-service Recharge portal in the header rather than a cancel link buried in an email — while still keeping the longer prepaid plans visibly more attractive
The business has two customers — subscribers and the brands that want to be sampled — and the storefront had to serve a supplement company evaluating a partnership without diluting the consumer pitch, which is what the separate brand-submission landing page and the Open Box archive are for

Solution

The Barbell Box is a Canadian fitness subscription box, run by founders Chad and Laura since 2017, that ships a monthly selection of sports nutrition, supplements, apparel and training gear to subscribers across Canada and the United States. The business sells exactly one thing — a recurring box — so the storefront was rebuilt around that single decision rather than around a catalogue. We redesigned the store on Shopify with Dawn forked into a branch-based workflow and made the subscription the product: a plan selector offering monthly, 3-, 6- and 12-month prepaid terms with the discount deepening by commitment, a 30% first-box offer, free shipping on every order and skip-or-cancel-anytime stated beside the price. Recharge powers the recurring billing and the Manage My Subscription portal in the header; Judge.me carries the review history that a years-old subscription brand has earned; Klaviyo handles the renewal and win-back email; Gorgias runs support chat. Around the box sit the pages that make a subscription business compound — an Open Box archive of every past product with affiliate links, a brand-submission funnel for suppliers who want into the box, and an affiliate programme that turns subscribers into a sales channel.

Services provided

Design

The design takes the colour out of the gym and puts it on the button. Every photograph — the hero, the how-it-works tiles, the box shots — is converted to black and white, so the store reads as one continuous editorial rather than a jumble of supplement packaging in competing brand colours. Against that monochrome, a single coral is the only colour on the page: the Try Your First Box pill in the header, the plan selector and Add button on the product page, the Load More on the Open Box archive and the full-width footer with the newsletter sign-up. Because nothing else is coloured, the eye lands on the subscription action from anywhere on the page. Three grotesques split the work: Akzidenz-Grotesk carries the homepage copy — Medium for the hero subline and review titles, Light for the how-it-works steps and the quotes — HK Grotesk takes the section headings, and Helvetica Now Display is the interface voice on the header, the plan selector and the Open Box page, with its ExtraBold weight on section titles. Buttons are fully pill-shaped at a 30px radius — white on the dark hero, coral everywhere else. The press logo marquee under the hero runs in white on black, so the proof layer stays inside the monochrome system too.

Colors

#000000
#FEA996
#F3F3F3
#A9A9A9
#FFFFFF

Typeface

Header, plan selector and section titles
Helvetica Now Display
Regular weight on the header links, the Subscribe & Save plan selector and its price and checklist, and the Open Box filters; ExtraBold on section titles such as Fitness Fanatics Are Saying and on the highlighted phrases in the Open Box intro. It is the theme's utility face — the one the interface speaks in, as distinct from the one the copy speaks in.
Section headings
HK Grotesk
Bold and Medium weights on the hero headline and section titles. A slightly narrower grotesque than Akzidenz, which gives the headings a sharper, more athletic edge against the copy beneath them.
Testimonials and homepage copy
Akzidenz-Grotesk
BQ Medium on the hero subline, the uppercase review titles and the reviewer names; CE Light on the how-it-works steps and the review quotes. The original grotesque underneath the Helvetica lineage, so it sits beside Helvetica Now without a visible seam while giving the customer voice a slightly warmer, older cut than the brand voice.

What we built

One Product, Four Plans

A Subscribe & Save selector with monthly, 3-, 6- and 12-month prepaid terms — $64.99 a month falling to $55 on the annual plan — beside a one-time purchase, so the whole business fits on one product page and the longer commitment is visibly the better deal.

The First Box at 30% Off

An introductory discount applied automatically to the first subscription box and shown as a strike-through at the point of choice, which removes the main objection to a recurring charge: trying it before committing.

Risk Reversal in Four Ticks

Free shipping, deeper discounts on longer plans, 30% off the first box and skip-or-cancel-anytime, listed as a checklist directly under the plan selector — every reason to hesitate answered before the Add button.

Manage My Subscription in the Header

A Recharge customer portal linked from the main navigation, so pausing, skipping, swapping plans and updating cards is self-service — the single biggest driver of support tickets on a subscription store, handled without a ticket.

How It Works in Three Steps

Join, we curate, enjoy the goods — a numbered explainer directly under the hero, followed by a what-makes-us-different strip: premium brands, up to $150 of value per box, free shipping on every order.

Open Box Archive

A filterable, month-by-month archive of every product that has shipped — jump ropes, protein, BCAAs, gummies — each with a Shop Now affiliate link, so past boxes keep earning after they have been delivered and prospects can see exactly what they would get.

Brand Submission Funnel

A landing page and application form for supplement and gear brands that want to be sampled in the box, with a five-step process and a two-business-day reply promise — the supply side of the business given its own front door.

Reviews From Eight Years of Subscribers

Judge.me ratings on the product page and a looping testimonial wall on the homepage, drawing on customers who have been subscribed since 2017 — long-tenure reviews are the proof a recurring purchase needs.

Affiliate and Ambassador Programme

A Lift, Share, Earn ambassador scheme run through GoAffPro and linked from the footer, turning the Facebook community the founders built into a referral channel with its own tracking.

Shipping Cycle Stated Plainly

Boxes ship by mid-month and new subscriptions join the next cycle — written on the product page and in a plain-English shipping policy, because the question a subscriber asks most is when the box arrives.