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I've seen enough ecommerce replatforms to know that client and agency relationships can end up like 90s band reunions. A great celebration or a sloppy mess. When I have a partnership that has come through the other side happy, I want to pick that project apart to know how they did it. That is what we are doing this week.
In this special Exclusive Episode, brought to you by Shopify Platinum Partner Convert Digital, I sit down with Robert Lupone, Chief Information Officer at Forever New, and Andrew Waite, CEO and founder of Convert Digital. They replatformed off Magento in nine months for four markets (Australia, New Zealand, the UK and Canada) on one global platform. That is a brand with almost 400 stores and concessions in 25 countries. The client and agency are still in the love bubble.
Plenty to learn if you have a replatform (or major project) in your future.
Cheers
Bushy
| Watch the episode |
CHAPTERS WORTH SKIPPING TO
Tap a time to jump to that moment in the video.
Rebuild for the customer. Don't copy the old site. (8:04)
Put every feature through a build or buy test. (12:26)
Pick partners already tied into Shopify. (17:38)
Fix your inventory data before launch. (19:29)
Get senior people into the steering meeting. (25:18)
How Shopify Markets lets one store sell across regions. (27:49)
Launch your most important market last. (29:54)
Use a partner to enter harder markets. (50:04)
| 01 By the numbers |
Nine months. Four markets. Almost 400 stores and concessions in 25 countries. The brand also turned 20 this September.
Results so far, from Rob:
Delivered on time and on budget.
Cancellation rates are lower than Forever New has ever had.
Organic traffic and sales are up in every market.
Claude cut integration builds by about 70 to 80 per cent.
| 02 What Forever New built into the new sites |
Forever New moved for speed. On Magento, routine improvements took months of agency and internal time. Many features they were building there were already shipped as standard on Shopify. So the new sites were designed as Shopify native first.
01 A specialist stack around Shopify.
Tech partners handle the specialist jobs. Emarsys does personalisation and marketing automation. Fredhopper runs search and merchandising. Checkout Components and Elevar handle checkout optimisation. TrueFit does sizing, Feedonomics product feeds and OneTrust privacy. Custom development is kept for what sets the Forever New experience apart.
02 Stock data closer to the customer.
On Magento, the site called the warehouse system for stock. Convert changed the integration pattern to pull stock data as close to the customer as possible with Shopify. Click and collect and ship from store get easier once the data is there. Rob's team did a lot of clean-up on store locations and how Shopify handles them with the order system. They track cancellations weekly, if not daily.
03 A dedicated returns platform.
Returns and refunds were a core piece of the project. Shopify hands that job to other tools, so Convert and Forever New reviewed the options together and brought in Loop Returns.
04 Light builds in the simpler markets.
The US stayed light on features and used the theme. India got a bit more. Australia went last with the learnings from the others. Rob says some markets don't have every feature Australia has yet. They roll features out where they make sense.
05 What is next: a wish list and personalisation.
A wish list tool is coming as a fast follow. The bigger push is hyper-personalisation. Forever New has built a composable customer data platform on Databricks. It will link the customer engagement platform, the loyalty engine and Fredhopper.
| 03 The quote |
“We didn't really have the luxury of time.”
ROBERT LUPONE, FOREVER NEW (23:56)
Rob says this was a 15 to 16-month project crammed into nine months. The old contract was expiring, so there was no time to spare. He gave his integration team a week to start using Claude on their builds.
| 04 How to keep a replatform simple |
Forever New spent over ten years on Magento. Rob's rule for the move: Less development, more configuration.
Convert held that line. Andrew's warning: the easy trap is copying what you already had, and the tech debt that comes with it.
How to keep your next replatform simple:
List every feature on your replatform wish list. Be ruthless. Rank each one by what it does for your customer.
Ask if your platform does it out of the box. If it does, take it and configure it.
If it doesn't, ask if customers would notice. Only build custom for what sets your brand apart.
If it isn't a differentiator, check a partner tool. It has to earn its place and connect cleanly to your platform.
Park everything else as a fast follow. Review it after go-live. (14:33)
GET CONVERT'S SALESFORCE TO SHOPIFY MIGRATION GUIDE
Thinking about leaving a legacy platform? Convert Digital's guide covers four signs your platform has become the ceiling, the six-step pathway off any legacy commerce platform and the migration stories of Showpo and Lorna Jane.
| 05 Five tips from Rob and Andrew |
1 Look past the upsell block in your checkout. Rob first saw Checkout Components as a place for an upsell. It has more depth than that. Andrew's team used it to carry the look and feel of product pages through to checkout, so the brand doesn't fall off a cliff at the last step. (20:11)
2 Check how your tracking works in checkout. Checkout is held to PCI rules, so you can't load Google Tag Manager there. Forever New uses Elevar for conversion tracking. (21:41)
3 Look at Shopify Markets before you spin up a second store. One storefront can serve several regions with their own pricing, messaging, payments, tax and duties. That used to need a separate store for each. (27:49)
4 Add real-time stock checks for click and collect. Rob's team checks stock at checkout, so a customer is only offered what's there. Once that works you can trim your stock buffers and show more availability. (22:13)
5 Use a partner for harder markets. Rob says markets like the Middle East and South America are ones where you really want a partner. Find a partner with a footprint there and split the work by what each side does best. (50:04)
| 06 Before you kick off a 2027 replatform |
YOUR REPLATFORMING CHECKLIST
Planning a platform move next year? Start here.
BEFORE YOU BRIEF ANYONE
☐ Share one clear vision of it with everyone on the project.
☐ Write a business case that says what you want to achieve and by when. Write it for yourself, not just the board.
☐ List every requirement in detail. The clearer you are, the less your agency has to guess.
☐ Make SEO and AI search a key requirement from the start. Bring your SEO partner in alongside your agency so you don't rework later.
☐ Add buffers to your time and budget before you set a launch date.
WHILE YOU BUILD
☐ Only shortlist vendors with native connectors or apps. Make it a rule on day one.
☐ Audit your inventory and location data before go-live. Fix wrong stock counts and store locations first.
☐ Give your agency access to your own tools on day one. Think Teams, Jira and Confluence.
BEFORE YOU LAUNCH
☐ Launch your simpler markets first and your most important market last. Fix what each launch teaches you before the next.
☐ Space your launches about a week apart. That gives your team time to learn and recover.
☐ Hold showcases at your office so nothing surprises anyone on launch day.
| 07 Contact Convert Digital |
Contact Convert Digital if you want to get in touch with a team who know how to replatform to make your next platform successful.
Email: [email protected]
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