Case studies / Inoki Bathhouse
The number stayed at $200. The pace swung tenfold.
Inoki Bathhouse ran a premium gift at a cart threshold, then swapped in a Mother's Day gift and a Black Friday card. Its counters move with the calendar, not with the number on the door.
Visit inokibathhouse.com ↗
01 / The problem The catalogue has a calendar, and one number cannot read it
Inoki Bathhouse sells tea baths, bath sets and candles. Inoki Bathhouse sells tea baths, bath sets and candles. Its offers read like a calendar: an advent calendar deal, a $7 scrunchie behind a $50 cart, a Mother's Day gift, a $40 gift card emailed on a fixed date.
One threshold, set against the everyday basket, says the same thing in May as it does in November.
Why moving the one number is not the answer
- Move the standing number
- It lands on every shopper at once, and the result cannot be read back out. This counter ran anywhere from 0.39 to 1.44 orders a day across stretches where the threshold never moved at all. inokibathhouse.com
- Discount the catalogue
- A percentage off reads the same on a Tuesday in March as on Mother's Day. It is tied to no moment, and it teaches the next visit to wait for the next sale. AOV.ai analysis
- Borrow a threshold from another store
- A threshold only means something against where the baskets in one catalogue already sit. The number that works next door carries none of that. AOV.ai analysis
What does a store do with the dates it already has?
02 / The campaign A rotation, not a floor
The premium gift is the campaign that ran longest. It opened at $200 with three products to choose from, went dark for a stretch, and came back at $150 and then $125 on the same campaign and the same counter. It was never the only thing running: four gift offers were live at once in its first weeks.
Each limit here buys something specific. One gift per order however large the cart, so a qualifying order costs one item and never two. A shortlist rather than a free pick, so the choice is real and the margin is known in advance. Each limit here buys something specific. One gift per order however large the cart, so a qualifying order costs one item and never two. A shortlist rather than a free pick, so the choice is real and the margin is known in advance. The shortlist kept narrowing, from three products down to one.
Each occasion offer brings its own number and its own gift. Mother's Day at $60 dropped a $10 candle and tea set into the cart by itself, so nothing was left for the shopper to remember. The June birthday pair let the gift multiply as the cart grew, which turns one gift into a reason to keep adding. By July the birthday numbers had moved to $50 and $100.
The Black Friday card is the tightest of them. The gift card is the tightest of them. Forty dollars against a $200 cart, sent by email on a fixed date rather than dropped in the basket, so it pays for the next order instead of discounting this one.
03 / The outcome What the counters show, and what they cannot
Orders that took the Mother's Day gift, in about a month.
It ran at 6.68 orders a day. The premium gift never came near that except once, in its own opening weeks, when it ran at 4.10.
That line does not say what it looks like it says. That line does not say what it looks like it says. Across three stretches where the threshold sat at $200 and the shopper still claimed the gift by hand, the pace ran 1.44, then 0.39, then 0.54 orders a day. The threshold and the way the gift was claimed were identical across all three.
What survives it points away from the number. The last stretch at $125 ran at 2.51 orders a day. The opening weeks at $200, a higher number and a harder claim, ran at 4.10. The fast one was Black Friday.
The change worth chasing is not a number. The gift also went from something the shopper claimed to something the cart added for them, the shortlist changed more than once, and Mother's Day opened in the middle of it. Too much moved at once to credit any of it.
AOV.ai published figures for this store: 20.32 per cent of revenue and 41.77 per cent of orders on these campaigns over two months.
04 / What this case shows Put the offer on the date, not on the number
The shape is cheap to copy, and it is not the one this store is usually credited with. Inoki did not hold one floor and hang occasions off it. It ran four gift offers at once in its busiest weeks, switched the premium gift off entirely for a stretch, and brought it back at a lower number.
Three questions decide it. Where do your orders already sit, which sets the floor. Which dates in your year do people buy from you for somebody else, which sets the occasions. What is the cheapest thing you sell that still reads as a present, which sets the gift. Here that was a $10 set against a $60 cart.
It does not fit every catalogue. If nobody buys from you as a present, there is no date for a second offer to attach to, and one threshold is the whole job. And at a handful of orders a day, no single window separates a good change from an ordinary week.
The campaigns are no longer on inokibathhouse.com. An offer like this is not a setting you switch on once. It is a decision a store keeps making, season by season.
