Selected Transformations / A commercial operation extracted and rebuilt
Whitaker Brothers
The work was not an ecommerce redesign. It was the reconstruction of a commercial system around portable data and connected operations.
What was supposed to become true?
Move a specialized equipment business out of a closed legacy commerce stack without losing the data, workflows or market knowledge required to operate.
The conditions
Whitaker Brothers sells specialized information-destruction equipment. The catalog contains products that require technical comparison, careful merchandising and operational knowledge before a buyer can make a useful decision.
The existing commerce environment constrained more than presentation. Product data, acquisition, conversion, pricing behavior, enterprise integration, logistics and measurement were entangled with a closed stack. A new storefront alone would reproduce the same dependency in a cleaner interface.
The transformation began by treating the legacy operation as something to reverse engineer: identify the underlying data and relationships, model them, map the transition and only then change the customer experience.
What had to exist
The resulting program moved through reverse engineering, data modeling, migration planning, Shopify Plus, enterprise integration, merchandising, acquisition, conversion, logistics and measurement.
- 01
Reverse engineer the legacy commerce and data model.
- 02
Map products, categories, pricing behavior and operational dependencies.
- 03
Transform and migrate data into a portable foundation.
- 04
Integrate the new Shopify Plus surface with the enterprise operation around it.
- 05
Redesign merchandising and acquisition around the reconstructed model.
- 06
Cut over, observe performance and retain the ability to measure what changed.
David’s role
David worked across the commercial and technical program, including the documented Shopify Plus re-platform and the migration work surrounding it.
What changed