Boost Oxygen is the leading seller of portable, supplemental oxygen canisters in the world. They sell lightweight cans of pure oxygen for non-medical use to athletes, older adults, people at high altitudes, or anyone experiencing poor air quality or wildfire smoke.
Since launching their business in 2007, they’ve been creating and building the category that they now lead — today, Boost Oxygen holds a 99% market share. With the ability to sell their products online on their Woo store, they’ve increased their reach and grown their sales year over year.
“This is a category that we built and are still building. We want to be known the same way as Xerox is for copying and Google is for search,” said Matthew Slywka, Ecommerce and Digital Growth Director at Boost Oxygen. “We strive to have Boost Oxygen be known that way for oxygen canisters.”
Since 2011, they’ve used WooCommerce to manage their online sales and operations, achieving tremendous growth in the years since. “WooCommerce has been a very flexible, customizable platform for us to scale our business,” said Robert Neuner, CEO and Founder of Boost Oxygen. “That’s why we picked it in the beginning. And we’ve really grown with it.”
In 2019, Rob pitched Boost Oxygen on Shark Tank, landing a million-dollar deal with Canadian entrepreneur and TV personality Kevin O’Leary.
After the show aired, they saw a dramatic 30% increase in year-over-year sales from 2018 to 2019 — allowing them to expand to over 8,000 retail locations, including big box retailers like Walmart, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Lowe’s and independent pharmacies.
Less than a year later, the COVID-19 pandemic brought respiratory health into the global spotlight. Their sales increased by an impressive 50% year-over-year from 2019 to 2020.
However, that sales spike in 2020 introduced a new challenge for Boost Oxygen: they sold out of six months’ worth of inventory in just three days as the pandemic shut down the nation. Several of their oxygen filling partners shut down due to the pandemic, which limited their supply.
So, in early 2021, they decided to move all manufacturing and fulfillment in-house.
Everything from manufacturing to sales to marketing to fulfillment happens within the walls of Boost Oxygen’s 38,000 square-foot facility in Milford, Connecticut.
When Boost Oxygen was founded in 2007, they were just two employees working out of a 200 square-foot office. Fast-forward to today and they’ve grown to more than 55 employees, and their headquarters covers 17 offices, plus warehouse, shipping, and manufacturing areas. They also have a dedicated sales team spread out across the US, as well as several international employees.
Boost Oxygen integrates their warehouse operations with WooCommerce to keep everything running smoothly. They use the FarApp API connector to push orders from WooCommerce to NetSuite, where their operations team approves the orders. Once approved, the warehouse fulfills the orders.
As their business gained momentum, their target audience shifted. They started out with a focus on sports, but quickly transitioned to altitude service and older adults. This allowed them to reach their primary audience, and extend to people with similar breathing issues and needs.
Since day one, they’ve focused on the fundamentals: solid operations, logistics, and customer service. No flashy or distracting gimmicks needed. They invest heavily in retail distribution, education, and point of sale materials such as floor stands, case cards, and shelf displays. Comparing their approach to the basics of American football, Director of Marketing Bill Banks described it as “essentially blocking and tackling.”
Managing a multichannel sales strategy
Their ecommerce strategy follows the same ethos. Their website has changed the game for them when it comes to educating the consumer.
When they leveraged their blog to publish educational articles and optimized their SEO, their traffic and sales surged. From there, boostoxygen.com became an integral part of the business. Currently, about 90% of their online sales are D2C.
From the beginning, they’ve operated as both a wholesale and D2C business. Another piece of their D2C strategy is subscriptions, which make up nearly 10% of their sales. Boost Oxygen customers who subscribe can save up to 20%, depending on the pack size they choose.
Their multichannel strategy also includes marketplaces and retail. Boost Oxygen owns a staggering 90% share of the oxygen market on Amazon, accounting for 25% of their business. Their brick and mortar distribution includes big players such as CVS, Walgreens, and Walmart. Additionally, they sell at a number of mountain resorts, where they are practically the only O2 tank sold.
“WooCommerce is a great option for businesses that are looking to start a site or get a high quality site for a very affordable price,” Matthew noted. For Boost Oxygen, one of the biggest benefits of using WooCommerce as their ecommerce platform is getting a high-performance online store without a sky-high price tag.
“WooCommerce packs a ton of functionality into a very affordable package. I have worked on more expensive platforms that didn’t have the list of features and functionality that WooCommerce has.”
— Matthew Slywka, Ecommerce and Digital Growth Director, Boost Oxygen
Boost Oxygen’s momentum didn’t end after the bump from COVID-19. They continue to see great growth, and Matthew and Rob attribute much of this success to their recent focus on advertising.
In 2024, they onboarded to Klaviyo, Woo’s preferred marketing automation platform, and have stepped up their email and SMS efforts. Additionally, they dedicate marketing efforts and budget toward TV advertising.
“We saw a big response in sales from doing this, and are increasing spend on this channel to drive growth even more,” Matthew says. “We are doing a great job of targeting our customers through this channel and are now starting to do streaming this year.”
Boost Oxygen is not planning to slow down anytime soon. As they continue to focus on advertising, they’re also leveling up their website to continue to grow online sales. This includes refreshing educational content shared to their blog, and improving the user experience and functionality.
They have plans to add a new loyalty program through the Advanced Coupons plugin, and are continuing to roll out their new email marketing strategy through the Klaviyo for WooCommerce integration.
“We still have a long way to go — a lot of blue ocean in front of us,” Rob says.
About
Sydney Hamilton
Sydney is a social media manager (her colleagues might even say a social media sorceress) and esteemed gif curator at Woo. When not crafting joyful content, she enjoys spending time with her rescue pups and moonlighting as a keyboardist and vocalist in a rock band.
