Optimizely
CASE STUDY
evo Delivers Peak-Season Reliability with Improved Customer Experience
Solving DIY Solr Complexity with On-Demand Scaling
“What matters is giving customers the right product faster, and SearchStax makes that possible. Chasing down Solr problems never helped us differentiate our brand.”
Terren Musselwhite | Software Architect at evo
The Need for Better Search - From Peak Season to Daily Customer Experience
evo is more than an outdoor and action sports retail company; it’s a community-driven brand offering products, travel experiences and physical destination-based packages that include hotels and skateparks. With millions of yearly sessions using the search bar, evo needed search functionality that could withstand heavy seasonal traffic while also guiding customers to the right gear and experiences.
By moving from an unreliable, DIY Solr setup to SearchStax Managed Search, evo stabilized its infrastructure, streamlined scale-up during its peak season and used built-in cloud automation to unlock bandwidth for their team to deliver faceted navigation and new guided discovery tools.
Search as an Experience Driver and Dealing With the DIY Burden
Search is central to evo’s visitor experience. Seasoned customers arrive knowing exactly what technical specifications they want, like ski width or snowboard flex, but they also rely on search to navigate a massive product catalog.
For beginners, the need for optimized search is even more essential on their journey to discovering the right products. To serve those needs, faceted search has become a critical navigation tool, enabling enthusiasts and novices alike to quickly find the right equipment amongst evo’s countless offerings.
As Ben Plehal, VP of Technology at evo explained:
“Customers appreciate the ability to facet navigate. They can filter and sort based on technical features and narrow in on exactly what they want.”
But under evo’s old DIY Solr environment, stability was always in question. Solr ran on Azure VMs with outdated documentation, unclear scaling needs and little visibility to support troubleshooting. Engineers often had no option but to restart services when outages occurred, sometimes at the worst possible moments.
“Before SearchStax, our team was often flying blind when troubleshooting Solr issues. Every minute we’re down, we’re losing thousands of dollars,” said Terren Musselwhite, Software Architect at evo.
The most painful examples came during Black Friday. For multiple years, evo experienced performance degradation in the early morning hours of its busiest shopping days. Outages not only cost revenue but also left engineers scrambling with no clear path to resolution.
Black Friday & Seasonal Flexibility: A Turning Point
evo’s journey with SearchStax has been transformative for their stability during their peak season.
In previous years, evo’s DIY Solr setup began degrading around 6 a.m. on Black Friday, leaving them unable to handle the surge with no time to react to the issue. Stability remained elusive during this peak season.
Fast forward to post-migration with Managed Search, evo finally made it through Cyber Five (the five-day online shopping period that begins on Thanksgiving Day and concludes on Cyber Monday) without service disruption. The team attributes this success to the ongoing support and tuning with SearchStax.
The difference in after finding the right Solr sizing with SearchStax was clear:
Seasonal scaling on demand: With SearchStax’s cloud automation, evo could temporarily expand its Solr cluster without overpaying year-round.
Peace of mind for engineers: No longer glued to dashboards, the team trusted SearchStax to carry the load.
Revenue protection: evo avoided the costly downtime that had plagued previous years, as SearchStax continues to deliver on our SLA-backed uptime guarantees.
“It’s pretty simple, we just don’t want it to fail on Cyber Five. With SearchStax, scaling is flexible and we’ve had stable Black Fridays ever since.”
– Terren Musselwhite
Solr Stability as a Service
By adopting Managed Search, evo offloaded the complexity of managing search infrastructure to gain built-in reliability, cloud automation and data security.
Stability first: Their peak commerce season is now predictable, not precarious.
Ease of scaling: “When we upgrade, SearchStax makes it extremely simple. It’s almost like having an ‘Add Solr Server button’—and that’s way better than before.” — Terren Musselwhite
Visibility and monitoring: “The logging SearchStax provides is definitely an upgrade. Before SearchStax we experienced major gaps in visibility to issues.” — Terren Musselwhite
Disaster recovery: Backup environments are now built-in, replacing the single-cluster risk of the past.
Operational relief: The true gain from adopting Managed Search was freeing engineers to focus on other projects and alleviate them from “flying blind” with Solr troubleshooting.
Search is the Strategic Differentiator for Product Discovery
While stability was the urgent driver, evo’s long-term value comes from what Solr enables them to deliver to customers.
“SearchStax Managed Search frees our team to build what matters, like faceting, autocomplete, and guided finders, rather than worrying about Solr uptime.”
– Terren Musselwhite
Capabilities like autocomplete have allowed them to streamline product discovery for all users, while faceted navigation goes beyond the average filtering experience.
Musselwhite further explained: “We’ve added a ‘product finder’—questions like height, weight or how often you ride—that feed facets into Solr and return narrowed results. It lowers the barrier for beginners.”
The product finder bridges the gap for beginners by mapping simple questions about them into filtered Solr results. So when a new user types “snowboard” in the search bar and is hit with hundreds of options, they aren’t overwhelmed to the point of leaving the site.
The product finder refines their results into personalized recommendations that fit their needs. Keeping visitors engaged in that discovery phase can be the difference between a session that ends in a purchase and one that loses the potential customer.
“For evo, search isn’t just infrastructure. It’s how we meet the needs of both passionate experts and first-time visitors, creating a differentiated experience that reinforces loyalty.”
– Ben Plehal
Partnership with SearchStax Support
Beyond the technology, the evo team highlighted the value of working with a team of Solr experts who could handle migration, scaling and troubleshooting:
“Our team was able to migrate all our Solr resources with just a help desk ticket. That was a dream.”
– Ben Plehal
“We were grateful to finally have a partner we could lean on as a subject matter expert for Solr.”
– Terren Musselwhite
This partnership mindset transformed SearchStax from a vendor into an extension of evo’s own engineering team.
The Best Ability is Availability
evo’s move to SearchStax Managed Search was driven by the urgent need to survive their high-traffic season without outages, but the benefits extend far beyond seasonal stability.
With reliability secured, evo’s team is confident that their Solr needs are taken care of and their search will remain a key navigation tool for this year’s Cyber Five and beyond. That freedom allows them to continue focusing on building customer-first experiences that differentiate their brand: precise facets for experts, more guided discovery tools for newcomers and faster navigation for everyone.
The result is a stronger, more resilient foundation for both today’s peak moments and tomorrow’s digital growth.
“The best ability is availability. With SearchStax, we no longer waste time making sure search is there for our customers; it just is.”
– Terren Musselwhite
Results at a Glance
| Category | Outcome |
|---|---|
| Search Usage | Millions of annual search sessions |
| Peak Season Resilience | First stable Cyber Five post-migration |
| Scalability | Flexible, on-demand scaling |
| Operational Efficiency | Engineers freed from constant Solr firefighting |
| UX Enhancements | Facets, autocomplete, product finder |
| Support | Seamless Azure migration, expert guidance |
Product
Managed Search
Platform
Custom
Location
North America
Industry
Retail
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