How haku helped Marine Corps Marathon Nearly Double Merchandise Revenue in Two Years

The opportunity

In 2023, Marine Corps Marathon introduced merchandise into its digital participant experience through haku.

The opportunity extended beyond simply making products available for purchase. To build a successful merchandise program, MCM and its merchandise partner, Recover Brands, needed commerce infrastructure they could trust.

Recover needed confidence that the platform could effectively convert participant interest into sales. It also needed timely, accurate visibility into exactly what was selling, how much was selling, and who was purchasing each product.

MCM needed that same visibility to monitor progress, understand results, and make informed adjustments to its merchandise and marketing strategy in real time.

The program’s success would depend on more than compelling products. It required close coordination between MCM, Recover, and haku, supported by dependable data and a participant experience designed to make purchasing simple.

The haku approach

haku provided the connected commerce infrastructure that allowed MCM and Recover to operate as one coordinated team.

A purchasing experience designed to convert

MCM made its broader merchandise collection available to participants across its events. haku’s product tagging and filtering capabilities made the larger selection easy to navigate, helping participants quickly find the products most relevant to them. Better product findability, combined with fewer steps between discovery and purchase, created an experience designed to increase conversion.

Products also remained available through participants’ haku accounts after registration, extending the opportunity to purchase beyond the initial transaction. However, most runners chose to buy while registering, demonstrating the importance of presenting relevant, easy-to-find merchandise when participant intent and excitement were at their highest.

This was more than adding products to a registration form. haku gave MCM a connected commerce experience that combined the immediacy of in-path purchasing with the simplicity of single-page registration and the discoverability of a well-organized product catalog, all designed to turn participant interest into completed purchases.

Accurate reporting that enabled better decisions

The quality and accuracy of haku’s purchase reporting were essential to the program.

Recover had dependable visibility into what was selling, in what quantities,  to which participants, and important data like shipping address. This product-level reporting supported better-informed merchandising and inventory decisions while giving Recover confidence that the haku platform could reliably convert and track sales as the program grew.

MCM could monitor progress and outcomes through the same connected data, helping the organization understand purchasing behavior and adjust its strategy in real time.

Instead of relying only on total revenue after the fact, MCM and Recover could use haku’s reporting to answer the questions that drive a stronger commerce strategy:

• Which products were resonating with participants?
• How many participants were purchasing merchandise?
• How much were they spending?
• Which audiences and events were driving performance?
• Where were there opportunities to improve conversion or increase order value?
• What profile of participants are most likely to convert on product sales?

This turned purchase reporting from an operational record into a tool for continuous optimization.

More relevant marketing and greater control

Every merchandise purchase remained connected to the participant’s registration, event history, and unified haku CRM record.

Because MCM’s participant, event, commerce, and communication data existed within one platform, haku, the organization could use haku’s segmentation capabilities to reach the right audiences at the right time to drive product conversion.

MCM could create targeted audiences within the marathon or across its broader event portfolio, rather than promoting merchandise indiscriminately to its entire community. This gave the team greater control over who received merchandise marketing and allowed communications to reflect each participant’s specific relationship with MCM.

The connected CRM also gave MCM a more complete understanding of participant value. Instead of evaluating participants only by registration revenue, the organization could see how merchandise contributed to each person’s broader engagement and spending over time.

That visibility helped MCM understand how its merchandise program was contributing to customer lifetime value while revealing additional opportunities to deepen participant relationships across events.

Coordination across three partners

The merchandise program brought together three distinct strengths:

• Marine Corps Marathon created meaningful events and understood the history, identity, and interests of its participant community.
• Recover Brands developed merchandise that reflected MCM’s culture and gave participants a meaningful way to commemorate their experience along with a seamless fulfillment experience.
• haku provided the commerce experience, reporting, CRM, segmentation, and participant intelligence needed to connect those products with the right buyers and continually improve performance.

Just as importantly, the haku team worked closely with both MCM and Recover. That collaboration ensured each partner had access to the information it needed, understood what the data was showing, and could coordinate decisions as the program evolved.

The results

Using 2023, the first year merchandise was available through the program, as its baseline, Marine Corps Marathon achieved significant growth over the following two years.

Merchandise revenue increased 98%, nearly doubling in two years.

The percentage of registrants purchasing merchandise increased from 15% to 25%, representing a 67% improvement in purchase rate. Average order value also increased 66%, meaning more participants were buying and each buyer was spending significantly more per transaction.

The gains were not driven by one isolated tactic. They came from a coordinated strategy that combined compelling merchandise, a high-converting purchasing experience, accurate reporting, targeted marketing, and ongoing collaboration across MCM, Recover, and haku.

Together, these improvements transformed merchandise into a more meaningful and scalable revenue stream.

Where haku made the difference

Most event platforms can place products inside a registration form. haku’s value extended far beyond that individual capability.

haku connected the complete commerce lifecycle:

• Merchandise was presented during the moments of highest participant intent.
• Products remained available after registration through each participant’s account.
• Every purchase was connected to the participant’s event history and unified CRM record.
• MCM could segment audiences within individual events and across its event portfolio.
• Recover received accurate visibility into product sales and purchasing behavior.
• MCM could monitor results and adjust its strategy as performance evolved.
• The organization could evaluate merchandise as part of total participant value, not as a disconnected revenue stream.
• MCM, Recover, and haku could work from the same dependable source of information.

That connected infrastructure gave MCM and Recover more than a place to transact. It gave them the confidence, intelligence, and operational visibility required to build, measure, and continually optimize a high-performing merchandise program.

Turning participant engagement into measurable growth

Registration revenue has a natural ceiling, but the participant relationship extends far beyond the initial transaction.

Marine Corps Marathon demonstrates what is possible when merchandise is treated as an integrated part of that relationship. By combining relevant products with a seamless purchasing experience, unified participant data, precise marketing controls, and actionable reporting, MCM increased both the number of participants purchasing merchandise and the value of each order.

haku Commerce helps endurance organizations move beyond simply offering merchandise. By connecting commerce with participant data, CRM, targeted communications, and accurate product-level reporting, haku gives event organizations and their merchandise partners the visibility and intelligence they need to improve conversion, increase order value, grow customer lifetime value, and build stronger revenue streams beyond registration.