Edge cases, single-category specialty (razor-only, beard-only) vs full-line?

Three brand archetypes I see, each with different platform answers:

Single-category specialty under $2M GMV:

• Razor-only (early-stage Harry’s competitor), beard-only (early Beardbrand), body-groomer-only (pre-2018 Manscaped).
• Catalog is 5-30 SKUs, 80%+ subscription revenue.
• Shopify + ReCharge wins here. Cheaper, faster to ship, app marketplace is dense for this exact use case. Magento is over-engineered for this scale.
• Migrate to Magento when you cross $3M GMV and expand category (e.g. razor brand adding beard care = full-line, hit Magento threshold).

Single-category specialty above $5M GMV:

• Beardbrand-style: deep specialty, hit ceiling on Shopify subscription customization (e.g. need custom blend-personalization for beard oil based on quiz, can’t do it cleanly on ReCharge).
• Magento becomes worth it if customization need is real. Otherwise sticking with Shopify Plus + custom-app spend is fine.
• Decision often comes down to: are you a tech-forward brand or a brand that happens to sell online? Tech-forward goes Magento, brand-led can stay Shopify.

Full-line men’s grooming at any scale:

• Manscaped, Hims, Lumin. 100-500 SKUs across razor + beard + body + skincare + supplements + (sometimes) telehealth.
• Multi-category subscription with cross-category swap, conditional cross-sell rules, complex loyalty tiers.
• Magento wins clearly above $5M GMV. Below that, Shopify Plus + Skio (build-a-box specialist) is acceptable.
• If telehealth is on the roadmap, start on Magento from day 1. Retrofit is brutal.

The huge-brand case ($50M+ like Manscaped, Harry’s, DSC): all of them are on heavily customized stacks. Manscaped is Shopify Plus + custom-built layer. Harry’s was custom-built from day 1. DSC is on a custom stack post-Unilever acquisition. At that scale, every brand is custom, the platform choice matters less than the engineering team behind it.