Legacy & leadership

This client provides spirit-focused merchandise and services to academic and recreational institutions across North America. They also organize nationwide extracurricular events and training programs. 

In the mid-2010s, this client and their portfolio of companies was acquired.  

In that purchase, the buyer inherited a network of siloed legacy commerce systems that struggled to support modern customer touchpoints and cumulatively were too unwieldy to maintain. 

The new ownership wanted to lean into business innovation to grow the value of this brand. So, they asked us to stand up a fully composable commerce stack. 

The student experience industry is unique in how commercial activity unfolds.  

Imagine yourself as a parent of a student on her school’s varsity basketball team:  

• Before the season begins, you’ll consult with coaches, school administrators, booster and other parents about uniform design, needed equipment and even fan apparel.  

• The school’s partner will present design options. 

• Once those are agreed upon, the partner will organize a limited-time sale where everyone can buy all the uniforms, equipment and fan apparel they need for that season. Everything will be made to order. 

Now, scale that to thousands of schools across North America, each of which will have several sports teams, a cheer squad and a yearbook staff. 

This is why our client needed a modern, flexible commerce stack. 

We delivered a consolidated foundation that has empowered this client to transform and deploy their multiple digital properties. 

Realizing that foundation meant transitioning the client from a Magento-based commerce platform and building a new one utilizing MACH (microservices, API-first, cloud-native, headless) principles. The new composable stack was built with commercetools, Contentstack, Bloomreach and a Next.js front end. 

In January 2024, the commerce factory foundation was ready. By May, three key digital properties were live. 

At the same time, we helped redesign the client’s flagship site and held a successful discovery session for one of the client’s brands. 

Putting control in the client’s hands 

Over the course of several months, during which we co-developed the platform alongside the client’s team, the client built up significant internal knowledge and capabilities.  

That has let them take over maintenance of the platform themselves. Our client can now make tech-free edits, refine the platform, and deploy content and features as needed.  

The acquisition 

During our engagement, the client was acquired by a global investment firm at a significant increase in valuation compared to its previous sale, nearly twice what the company sold for six years prior. 

Next steps 

We continue to advise and propose work that builds upon the success of the composable commerce platform by evolving the tech stack, bringing all business units together onto a common platform, and embedding teams to create scale for future ambitions. 

Our work unlocked the scalable and flexible composable commerce foundation our client sought. With this foundation, they are poised to:  

• Add any new capabilities with ease  

• Integrate those capabilities across properties 

• Turn their focus from maintenance to customer-value initiatives