Case Studies

Stories Flooring: Building a Connected Revenue System in HubSpot

Written by Imagine growth | Aug 20, 2025 2:13:44 PM

How Imagine Growth helped Stories Flooring replace a fragmented ecommerce tech stack with one connected HubSpot revenue system.

Stories Flooring is a growing ecommerce flooring business selling high-quality flooring products online.

Like many ecommerce businesses, the company had built its operations around a set of separate tools. Shopify powered the store. Klaviyo, Mailchimp and Gorgias supported marketing and customer service activity. Each platform had a role, but together they created a fragmented setup.

Customer data, marketing activity, sales follow-up, service queries and reporting were spread across different systems.

Stories Flooring needed a better way to manage growth.

The business partnered with Imagine Growth to replace its fragmented marketing, CRM and service stack with a connected HubSpot revenue system, while keeping Shopify connected as the ecommerce engine.

The challenge

Stories Flooring had reached the point where separate tools were slowing the team down.

The business was using multiple systems across ecommerce, marketing, sales and service. This created too much switching between platforms and made it harder to see the full customer picture.

The main issue was not that the tools were bad. The issue was that they were disconnected.

A customer could browse or buy through Shopify, receive marketing through one tool, contact support through another, and have their sales or service history stored somewhere else.

That made it harder for the team to answer simple but important questions:

  • Who is this customer?
  • What have they bought?
  • What have they looked at?
  • Have they contacted us before?
  • What marketing have they received?
  • What stage are they at?
  • What should happen next?
  • Which channels and activities are actually helping revenue?

For a growing ecommerce business, that lack of visibility creates operational drag.

It affects team efficiency, customer experience, reporting and decision-making.

The strategic problem

The problem was not just a software problem.

Stories Flooring had outgrown a tool-by-tool setup.

The business needed a connected revenue system that could support the full customer lifecycle:

  • First website visit
  • Product interest
  • Email sign-up
  • Cart abandonment
  • Order activity
  • Customer support
  • Sales follow-up
  • Reporting
  • Repeat purchase and retention

Before the project, different parts of this lifecycle sat in different tools.

The goal was to bring these parts together in HubSpot, so the business could manage marketing, CRM, sales and service from one central platform.

Shopify would remain connected as the ecommerce platform, but HubSpot would become the operating system for customer relationships, follow-up, automation and reporting.

The solution

Imagine Growth designed and implemented a connected HubSpot revenue system for Stories Flooring.

This included replacing Klaviyo, Mailchimp and Gorgias with HubSpot, while connecting HubSpot with Shopify.

The project covered:

  • HubSpot CRM setup
  • Sales Hub implementation
  • Marketing Hub implementation
  • Service Hub implementation
  • Shopify connection
  • Ecommerce data visibility
  • Marketing automation migration
  • Customer service process setup
  • Forms and live chat
  • Ticket pipelines
  • Sales and service reporting
  • Team training
  • Go-live support

The aim was to give Stories Flooring one connected system for managing customer activity across marketing, sales and service.

Building the CRM foundation

The first step was creating a HubSpot CRM foundation that could support the business properly.

This meant configuring HubSpot around how Stories Flooring actually works, rather than forcing the team into a generic CRM structure.

We reviewed how customer information, enquiries, orders and follow-ups moved through the business, then created a setup that made this clearer inside HubSpot.

This included:

  • Contact and company structure
  • Custom properties
  • Record layouts
  • Sales pipelines
  • Deal stages
  • User roles and permissions
  • Core views for the team
  • Reporting dashboards

The CRM became the central customer record.

Instead of switching between multiple platforms to understand what was happening, the team could use HubSpot as the main place to view customer context and manage follow-up.

Replacing disconnected marketing tools with Marketing Hub

Stories Flooring had been using separate tools for email marketing and automation.

Imagine Growth helped move this activity into HubSpot Marketing Hub.

This created a simpler and more connected setup for the team.

The Marketing Hub work included:

  • Email template setup
  • Landing page templates
  • Form creation
  • Email sign-up automation
  • Browse product automation
  • Abandoned cart automation
  • Segmentation
  • Marketing reporting
  • Campaign visibility

This replaced separate email marketing tools and brought marketing activity closer to CRM and ecommerce data.

The benefit was not just having emails in HubSpot. It was that marketing activity could now connect to customer records, sales activity, service history and reporting.

That gave the business a better foundation for lifecycle marketing and revenue attribution.

Connecting Shopify to HubSpot

Shopify remained the ecommerce engine for Stories Flooring.

The project connected Shopify activity with HubSpot so ecommerce data could become part of the wider revenue system.

This gave the team better visibility across customer records, order activity and follow-up.

We also configured order-to-deal cloning, helping ecommerce orders become more visible inside the CRM.

This meant Shopify could continue doing what it does best, while HubSpot provided the customer, marketing, sales and service layer around it.

The result was a cleaner system:

  • Shopify for ecommerce transactions
  • HubSpot for customer relationships, automation, sales, service and reporting

Replacing Gorgias with Service Hub

Customer service was another key part of the project.

Stories Flooring needed a clearer way to manage customer queries from one platform, linked to the customer record and the wider revenue system.

Imagine Growth replaced the disconnected service setup with HubSpot Service Hub.

This included:

  • Ticket pipeline configuration
  • Conversations inbox setup
  • Support forms
  • Live chat
  • Customer service automation
  • Ticket routing
  • Internal notifications
  • Service reporting
  • Knowledge base setup
  • Team views

This gave the team a more structured way to manage customer queries.

Instead of customer service sitting separately from CRM and marketing, it became part of the same HubSpot system.

That matters because service conversations are not isolated events. They affect customer experience, repeat purchase, retention and team workload.

Creating one view across marketing, sales and service

A major part of the project was visibility.

Before the HubSpot implementation, Stories Flooring had useful data across multiple tools, but no single operating view.

By bringing marketing, CRM and service into HubSpot, the team gained a clearer view of the customer lifecycle.

HubSpot became the place to see:

  • Customer profile data
  • Marketing engagement
  • Form submissions
  • Email activity
  • Sales activity
  • Deal information
  • Order-linked activity
  • Service tickets
  • Support conversations
  • Reporting dashboards

This helped the team work with more context.

It also gave leadership a clearer view of what was happening across the business.

Reporting and decision-making

Disconnected tools create disconnected reporting.

For Stories Flooring, one of the biggest benefits of moving into HubSpot was the ability to report across more of the customer lifecycle.

Imagine Growth created dashboards to help the business understand performance across marketing, sales and service.

This included visibility across:

  • Lead generation
  • Marketing channel performance
  • Form submissions
  • Email performance
  • Sales activity
  • Deal activity
  • Customer service activity
  • Ticket volumes
  • Database quality
  • Funnel movement

This gave Stories Flooring a stronger reporting base for future growth.

Instead of looking at separate platform reports in isolation, the team could start making decisions from a more connected view of customer activity.

 

Training and adoption

A revenue system only works if the team uses it properly.

Imagine Growth supported Stories Flooring through training, testing and go-live.

This included:

  • User testing
  • Configuration review
  • Team training
  • Go-live support
  • Post-launch coaching
  • Practical guidance on how to use HubSpot day to day

The goal was to make sure HubSpot was not just technically set up, but usable for the people who needed it.

The outcome

Stories Flooring moved from a fragmented ecommerce tech stack to a connected HubSpot revenue system.

Klaviyo, Mailchimp and Gorgias were replaced with HubSpot.

Shopify remained connected as the ecommerce platform.

HubSpot became the central system for CRM, marketing, sales, service, automation and reporting.

The business gained:

  • A simpler tech stack
  • One central view of customer activity
  • A connected marketing, sales and service setup
  • Better visibility of Shopify-linked activity
  • Clearer customer follow-up
  • More structured service processes
  • Improved reporting across the customer lifecycle
  • A scalable HubSpot foundation for future growth

This gave Stories Flooring a stronger operating system for growth.

Why this matters

Many ecommerce businesses reach a point where their tech stack starts to work against them.

At first, separate tools feel flexible. One tool handles ecommerce. Another handles email. Another handles customer service. Another handles CRM.

But as the business grows, that setup creates gaps.

Customer data becomes scattered. Teams waste time switching between systems. Reporting becomes harder. Follow-up becomes inconsistent. Leadership loses visibility.

Stories Flooring needed to move past that stage.

By using HubSpot as the central revenue system, connected to Shopify, the business created a clearer and more scalable way to manage growth.

Need HubSpot to become your revenue system?

Imagine Growth helps businesses turn HubSpot, their website, ecommerce tools, marketing activity and reporting into one connected revenue system.

If your team is switching between disconnected tools and struggling to see the full customer picture, we can help you design and build a better setup.

Book a growth session with Imagine Growth to review your current system and identify what needs to change.