Log in Talk to an expert

Hardloop

  • E-commerce

Steering operating profitability for an outdoor leader

How Hardloop, a pure-play outdoor equipment retailer, took back control of its margin by making all of its costs reliable with Biron.

+ several pts
of operating margin in a few months
3
standard data sources connected
7
analysis modules implemented
25
daily users

The client

Hardloop, the pure-play outdoor equipment retailer

Founded in 2015, Hardloop is a French e-commerce retailer specialising in the outdoors — hiking, trail running, climbing, mountaineering, skiing. Its mission: to let anyone, from the beginner to the athlete, find the right equipment to head off on an adventure, with a strong commitment to eco-design.

Sector
Sport / outdoor equipment
Founded
2015
Revenue
€10M
Headcount
~50
Biron client
since 2023
Catalogue
30,000+ references
Tents lit up at a bivouac in front of a snowy summit at night, with the Hardloop logo

The challenge

Strong growth, but margins that were slipping

After a phase of strong growth, Hardloop faced a new challenge: recovering margin without slowing the momentum. Behind a rising revenue line, the drivers of profitability were becoming blurred, and the teams struggled to know where to act — between the delivery policy, the product catalogue and the marketing costs.

  • Data scattered across different tools, with no consolidated view

  • Manual analyses that gave no granular reading of performance

  • No way to isolate the costliest items, or to steer profitability per order in real time

  • Complex stock to manage, across a very large number of references

The Biron answer

Modelling the operating margin end to end

Biron brought in and structured all of Hardloop’s real costs, to go beyond plain gross margin and reveal the true profitability — per order, per product and per country.

  • Contribution margin

    Fine-grained integration of the real costs — logistics, shipping, marketing — revealing cost items that had been invisible until then.

  • Advanced analysis by country

    Performance calculated per order and per product, with a country focus to spot the unprofitable territories.

  • Stock & purchasing management

    End-to-end tracking, from purchase to sale: rotation, stock-outs and replenishments already under way.

How it went

  1. Connecting the sources: Odoo, Google Ads and Meta Ads
  2. Collecting and finely structuring all of the real costs
  3. Modelling the contribution margin per order and per product
  4. Rolling out the stock, rotation and country-profitability analyses

The results

Profitability under control, growth secured

Within a few months, Hardloop improved its operating margin by several points, by adjusting its delivery policy and its product mix — without slowing its growth.

  • Profitability up: several points of margin gained in a few months

  • Precise stock management: better rotation, fewer stock-outs

  • Operations stopped in the countries where every order lost money

  • A central decision tool, used daily by the teams

A roped climber working along a rocky ridge in the mist

“Biron has helped us manage our stock far better day to day, with in-depth analyses shaped around what our business actually needs.”

Guillaume Richard Co-founder · Hardloop
Guillaume Richard, Co-founder of Hardloop

Behind the scenes

What Hardloop connected to Biron

Three standard sources are enough to feed the foundation Hardloop now uses to steer its margin, its stock and its performance by country.

  • Odoo
  • Google Ads
  • Meta Ads
  • Prestashop
  • Raw files

Keep reading

Other stories like this one

Want the same results?

Let us talk about your data challenges. Book a call with our team to find out more.

Talk to a data expert