Building a Premium Ecommerce Experience for a New Force in Performance Sailing

VMG Race is a premium performance sailing apparel brand founded by Brad Butterworth, a four-time America's Cup winner and Hall of Fame sailor whose career spans seven Cup campaigns, two Whitbread Round the World Races, and victories at the highest level of the sport. The brand sits within the Butterworth Group, translating decades of elite racing experience into technical clothing built for real competition on the water.

VMG Race launched with a clear position: premium, technical, tried and tested, and born out of a genuine passion for the ocean. Every product carries that credibility, both online and in their physical store at Westhaven Marina in Auckland.

VMG Race was a new brand launching from scratch with no ecommerce presence. The site needed to do three things at once: sell technical sailing apparel to a performance-driven audience, tell a founder-led brand story with genuine sporting credibility, and connect seamlessly with a physical retail store at one of Auckland's busiest yachting hubs.

Premium apparel at a technical price point demands a site that earns trust immediately. There was no runway for iteration. The online experience had to match the product quality from day one.

Blackpepper designed and built a full Shopify ecommerce site, purpose-built for direct-to-consumer sales and connected to VMG Race's physical retail operation.

• Full Shopify ecommerce build: A complete site designed around the VMG Race brand, optimised for D2C conversion with a clean, premium UX that reflects the quality of the product.
• Brand storytelling built into the structure: Dedicated sections for the VMG Race story, Brad's credentials, and product innovation, so the brand's authority comes through without the customer having to dig for it.
• Shopify POS integration: The physical store at Westhaven Marina runs on the same Shopify system as the website. One catalogue, one set of pricing, one stock pool. VMG Race manages one system instead of two, and customers get a consistent experience whether they buy online or walk in off the marina.
• CRM and email automation: Integrated from launch so VMG Race could start building customer relationships from day one, not retrofit it later.
• SEO foundations from the ground up: Site structure, metadata, and technical setup built for search visibility from launch, giving a brand-new domain the best possible start in organic.
• Launch support: Coordinated go-live to ensure the site launched clean, fast, and with confidence.

VMG Race launched with a premium ecommerce site that matched the brand's positioning from day one: a unified online and in-store experience running on Shopify, a foundation for long-term organic growth, and a platform ready to scale as the brand builds its audience in a niche, high-value category.

• Live and selling from launch day: Online and in-store operations running on one unified system.
• A premium brand experience: Earns trust at first visit, critical for a new entrant at a technical price point.
• Built for growth: SEO, email automation, and a scalable Shopify setup ready for the brand's next phase.

• Shopify
• Shopify POS