Fans Of Free drives 4.5x higher conversion on shoppers who chat with Carti
Installed in March 2026, Fans Of Free is seeing $537 in attributed monthly revenue, a 4.5x conversion lift among engaged shoppers, and 3 hours saved every week for its solo founder.
Carti Revenue
$537
+10%Carti Orders
17
+6%Total Conversations
156
+11%Human Escalations
14
+8%March 21 to April 20, 2026
About Fans Of Free
Founded in 2015, Fans Of Free is a go-to source online for rainbow pride flags, with tens of thousands sold over the past decade, alongside jewelry, stickers, and other pride essentials. The brand is rooted in LGBTQ+ pride and the broader idea that people deserve to take pride in who they are, whatever that looks like.
Founded
2015
Team size
1 person
Traffic source
100% organic
The challenge
Fans Of Free has grown almost entirely through organic word of mouth: Pride events, repeat purchases, and a community that genuinely loves the brand. The product pages work, the catalog is strong, but Brendan is one person. Pre-purchase tickets piled up in email, and by the time he got to them, a meaningful share of shoppers had already moved on.
Before Carti, Brendan had tried Shopify Inbox. It created an expectation of instant replies that a solo operator could not meet, which made the experience feel worse than no chat at all. Customers felt ignored. Brendan felt pulled in fifteen directions.
Why Fans Of Free chose Carti
Brendan installed Carti in March 2026. The first 100 merchants get Carti completely free, which made the decision a no-brainer for a solo-operated small store. What he found on the other side of setup was the first chat experience that actually lived up to the expectations it set.
- Instant product answers pulled from the catalog, so shoppers get sizing, materials, and shipping info without waiting on email.
- Email-verified discount offers that prevent throwaway addresses from grabbing a code and disappearing.
- Clean escalation when a shopper genuinely needs a human. Less than a ticket a day, and often only a couple a week, get routed back to Brendan.
- 3 hours saved every week for a founder who was previously drowning in pre-purchase tickets.
Carti picked up Brendan's inclusive, community-first voice without any tone tuning, which matters when you're serving the LGBTQ+ community. Responses read like Fans Of Free, not like a generic support bot.
What shoppers actually ask
A representative sample of the real questions Carti handled on Fans Of Free in the first month, and the answers it gave back.
Shipping
Shopper
Do you ship internationally?
Carti
Right now we're US-only — orders ship out of our Tucson warehouse in 5 to 7 business days. If you're outside the US and really want a flag, the easiest workaround is having a US-based friend or family member order and forward it on. Sorry I can't get you set up directly!
Product
Shopper
Is the flag double-sided?
Carti
Yes! Our pride flags are printed on both sides, so they look great whether you're flying them on a pole or hanging them in a window. Both sides read correctly — no mirrored text or backwards colors.
Packaging
Shopper
Do you ship discreetly?
Carti
Yes, of course. All orders go out in plain packaging with no rainbow branding on the outside — just our business name as the return address. We know not everyone has a welcoming mail situation, and we'd never want Fans Of Free on your doorstep to out you.
What happened after installing
The numbers on this page cover 30 days, March 21 to April 20, 2026. Fans Of Free is a small community-driven brand, so the raw dollar volumes are modest. The shape of the results is what is notable: a 4.5x conversion lift on shoppers who engage with Carti, about 156 conversations handled in the month, and less than a ticket a day, often only a couple a week, routed back to Brendan.
Day 1
Installed in under 10 minutes. No custom training, no developer required.
Week 1
First attributed orders came through, and the pile of pre-purchase emails started shrinking.
Month 1
156 conversations handled, $537 attributed, 3 hours returned to Brendan every week.
Conversion lift
4.5x
Shoppers who engage with Carti convert at four and a half times the rate of shoppers who do not.
Revenue attribution
$537
Directly attributed to Carti conversations over 30 days, up 10 percent period over period.
Founder time saved
3 hours/week
Brendan estimates Carti saves him at least 3 hours every week on pre-purchase tickets. Less than a ticket a day, and often only a couple a week, needs his direct attention.
Conversation volume
156
Conversations in 30 days, up 11 percent period over period. More volume naturally produced a few more escalations (14 total, up 8 percent), all handled cleanly by email.
For a one-person team relying on organic traffic and word of mouth, the story Brendan tells is less about raw revenue and more about time returned. Carti is handling the questions he used to answer himself, at a rate his Shopify Inbox attempt could not match.
Brendan's favorite feature
Email-verified discount flow
When a shopper unlocks a discount through Carti, the code is released only after they confirm a real, verified email address. Throwaway inboxes and auto-generated spam addresses don't get past the gate. Every code Brendan hands out is going to someone he can actually reach again.
For a solo operator building a community-driven brand, that detail compounds over time. The email list stays clean, the repeat-purchase rate on promo redemptions stays honest, and Brendan isn't subsidizing fake addresses to juice his signup numbers.
What's next: Pride-season stress test
The numbers on this page come from a quiet month. Pride 2026 hits in June, and Fans Of Free typically sees a multiple of its normal traffic in the lead-up. Brendan is keeping Carti running through the surge as his frontline support agent, and we will update this case study after Pride to show how the system held up under real load.
The hypothesis: proactive triggers and instant product lookup matter even more when a shopper is one of thousands, not one of a few. Check back in July.
“Carti has been a huge time saver, and it drives real revenue too. My customers are getting instant answers and finding exactly what they came for, and I have more time to work on the business instead of responding to tickets all day.”
Does this sound like your store?
If you are a solo operator or small team with organic traffic and a pile of pre-purchase questions, Fans Of Free's story is close to what you can expect. Carti is free for the first 100 merchants, so there is no risk in trying it out.
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