Scaling UX for a Successful Shopify Migration
- Melissa Kerr
- Jun 5
- 5 min read
In February 2025, I found myself at the helm of one of the most ambitious UX initiatives our team had ever taken on: redesigning and migrating seven distinct brands to a unified Shopify platform. Each brand came with its own legacy, expectations, and audience—and each needed a fresh, modern web experience that aligned with a new design system we were building from the ground up.
This wasn’t just a platform migration. It was a full-scale transformation—visually, structurally, and strategically.
Five of the brands require global alignment across regions, while others had never received dedicated UX attention before. The stakes were high, the timelines were tight, and the expectations? Let’s just say they were sky-high.
We are four months into this 12 month endeavor, and I wanted to reflect on the progress to date.
THE CHALLENGE OF SCALE
Managing one brand redesign is a challenge. Managing seven, each with its own stakeholders, goals, and quirks—on a rolling timeline where one brand’s work overlapped with the next—was a true test of orchestration.
We didn’t tackle all seven brands at once. Instead, we followed a progressive rollout strategy. Our core design team of five split into two sub-teams, each focused on a different brand with staggered timelines. As one team was wrapping up final designs, the other was deep in refinement—and often, a new brand was already being picked up.
As the project gained momentum, our team expanded to seven designers, distributed across an agency partner, our AMER and EMEA DT UX teams, and supported by brand graphic designers. This global collaboration and scrappy partnerships — borrowing where we could — allowed us to scale efficiently while maintaining quality and continuity. It also meant we were constantly navigating shifting priorities, overlapping feedback cycles, and evolving stakeholder expectations across multiple tracks.
The timelines were aggressive—some brands had just five weeks for design, others stretched to eight. And these weren’t soft deadlines. Our design delivery had to stay tightly aligned with development sprints to keep the entire program on track. There was no buffer, no wiggle room. Every day counted.
Adding to the complexity, many of these brands had never received focused UX attention before. This was their moment to shine, and they came to the table with big dreams. They wanted bold, beautiful, bespoke experiences—and rightfully so. Our challenge was to honor those ambitions while staying grounded in our design system and delivery commitments.
But that’s where the magic happened. We leaned into the challenge, stayed grounded in our system, and found creative ways to deliver beautiful, brand-aligned experiences—on time.
GLOBAL ALIGNMENT ACROSS REGIONS
Four months in, two of the brands we worked on had a unique layer of complexity: they operated across multiple regions, each with its own marketing teams, customer expectations, and visual preferences. Our goal was to bring these regional variations into a single, cohesive global experience—without losing the nuances that made each market feel local and relevant.
This required a lot of listening, alignment, and compromise. We facilitated working sessions across time zones, gathered input from regional stakeholders, and mapped out where flexibility was needed versus where consistency was critical. It wasn’t about enforcing uniformity—it was about creating a shared visual language that could flex just enough to feel authentic in every market.
The design system played a huge role here. Because we had built it with modularity in mind, we could offer regional teams a set of adaptable components—like hero banners, product cards, and navigation styles—that could be configured to meet local needs while still feeling unmistakably part of the same brand family. If one region wanted a transparent navigation on the homepage but another wanted a solid background - we were able to accommodate.
In the end, we didn’t just align visuals—we aligned teams. We created a shared understanding of what the brand stood for globally, and how that could come to life in a way that felt both unified and regionally resonant.
UX DELIVERY AND COLLABORATION
Delivering high-quality UX across multiple brands requires more than just great design—it demands tight coordination, clear communication, and a shared sense of ownership across teams.
We used Figma as our central design hub. All design system elements lived in a shared file, giving us visibility into how components evolved and scaled across brands. This setup allowed us to maintain consistency while still giving each brand room to express its unique identity. Once the system was in place, we created dedicated pages for each brand’s key templates—PLP, PDP, Homepage, CLP, Cart, Checkout, and My Account/Loyalty—ensuring that every experience was both system-aligned and brand-authentic.
For project management, we relied on Jira and Figjam, where we created timelines, epics and design stories to track progress and stay aligned with cross-squad partners. This structure helped us stay focused and accountable, especially as we balanced overlapping brand tracks and evolving priorities.
Collaboration extended beyond our immediate UX team. We worked closely with multiple developer squads, project managers, product owners, and brand stakeholders across AMER and EMEA, as well as agency partners and in-house graphic designers. This global, cross-functional collaboration was key to our success. It allowed us to move quickly, adapt to feedback, and deliver thoughtful, high-impact work—despite the complexity and pace of the program.
TIMELINE AND KEY MILESTONES
The project officially kicked off on February 17, 2025, with the initial focus on building a scalable design system alongside our first 2 brands. From there, we moved into a progressive rollout of brand redesigns, each overlapping slightly with the next to maintain momentum and continuity.
Some key milestones include:
Brands 1 & 2: Napapijri (EMEA only), Kipling (Global)
Launch in May, June and July
Brands 3 & 4: Icebreaker (Global), Eastpak (EMEA only)
Launch in July and August
Brand 5: Dickies (Global)
Launch in September
Brands 6 & 7: Altra and Smartwool (Global)
Launch in January
Project Completion: Scheduled for January 2026
This structured yet flexible timeline allowed us to stay on track while continuously applying learnings from one brand to the next. It also gave our development partners the predictability they needed to plan and execute their work in parallel.
REFLECTION: THE FIRST FOUR MONTHS
Looking back on the first four months of this journey, it’s already been a masterclass in scaling UX with intention. We’ve successfully delivered one brand to production, have another deep in development, and two more actively in design. Each phase has brought its own lessons, challenges, and moments of creative problem-solving.
With seven months to go and three more brands ahead of us, and three to wrap up, my team and I are taking everything we’ve learned so far and using it to refine our process. We’re committed to improving how we work, how we communicate, and how we design—with each brand making us sharper, faster, and more aligned!
What’s become clear is that great design isn’t just about pixels—it’s about people, process, and partnership. When those align, even in the early stages, you start to see momentum build. And that momentum is what turns complexity into clarity, and ambition into action.
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