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From enterprise customization to composable SaaS
An international commerce foundation with Shopify and Voyado
Jack Wolfskin, the German outdoor brand, has been running on a highly customized environment since 2013. To lower the TCO and gain flexibility, Jack Wolfskin chose Shopify. valantic helped transform that migration into a future-proof online store in which existing enterprise functionalities – from loyalty to merchandising – were rebuilt in a smarter way.
The challenge
Jack Wolfskin had been running on a legacy webshop since 2013. Launching new functionalities took a lot of time, and the search experience made it hard for customers to quickly find the right product. The result: missed conversion opportunities, weaker customer loyalty, and a high TCO due to the platform’s complexity and maintenance.
On top of that, there was a second challenge. Jack Wolfskin is an enterprise organization with existing processes around content management, campaigns, and CRM/loyalty that were deeply embedded in the old environment. So a switch to a more standardized SaaS platform like Shopify wasn’t simply a matter of moving over a front-end, it raised a fundamental question: which functionality is truly business-critical, and what could be simplified?
The approach
The final choice of platform and partners was driven by the need for:
- a modern, API-first commerce foundation
- a powerful yet easy-to-use search and merchandising solution for marketing
- partners who understood the Jack Wolfskin brand and its long-term vision
For the search, merchandising, and recommendation functionality that Jack Wolfskin was accustomed to, the choice fell on Voyado, which handled the intelligence layer for product discovery and relevance. valantic translated these principles into a concrete implementation, always guided by the following principle: Use Shopify wherever possible, and build custom solutions only where the business truly requires it:
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1
Discovery of the existing ecosystem
valantic, in collaboration with several teams from Jack Wolfskin, mapped out the existing customer journeys, content and campaign processes, CRM and loyalty requirements, international market structure, and existing custom functionality. The goal was to determine what needed to be retained, what could be simplified, and what could be replaced with standard functionality.
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2
Rebuilding the storefront on Shopify
Recognizable e-commerce elements such as banners, content sections, product carousels, and filters were redesigned within the Shopify environment, aligned with Jack Wolfskin’s refreshed brand experience.
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3
A custom integration layer between Shopify and Voyado
Instead of using an off-the-shelf integration, the development team built a custom accelerator to expose data from Shopify to Voyado, and storefront templates were customized to display Voyado data throughout the customer journey.
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4
Customization for My Account & loyalty
Shopify’s new customer accounts were expanded with custom apps and extensions to support real-time loyalty data, country-specific customer information, vouchers, and points promotions, functionality that Jack Wolfskin was accustomed to from its external CRM system.
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5
A custom store locator
To gain more control over the look and feel, data, and integration within the site, valantic built a custom store locator.
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6
A single international foundation with Shopify Markets
The previously separate, country-specific domains have been consolidated under a single central domain, jack-wolfskin.com, with each market having its own language and configuration via Shopify Markets.
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A refreshed brand experience
The migration was undertaken simultaneously to refresh the digital brand experience, with a stronger role for the signature Jack Wolfskin yellow and a cleaner visual hierarchy.
The Results
A single, centralized, internationally scalable platform instead of separate country-specific domains
In addition, the project delivered the following to Jack Wolfskin:
A storefront that feels seamless throughout key shopping journeys, such as product overviews, filtering, and product display
More relevant product discovery and merchandising thanks to Voyado’s dedicated search and recommendation layer
Retention of business-critical loyalty and CRM functionality
A simpler foundation for adding new countries, languages, and markets via Shopify Markets
A fresher, more modern brand experience that better aligns with Jack Wolfskin’s updated brand identity
A modular architecture in which specialized functionality such as search and loyalty can continue to be developed independently
At the same time, the project reveals a more nuanced picture of TCO in a SaaS migration: lower platform costs do not automatically lead to lower total costs when an enterprise organization wants to replicate existing custom functionality on a one-to-one basis. For Jack Wolfskin, the key to a future-proof commerce foundation turned out to be finding the right balance between standardization, targeted customization, and specialization.
About Jack Wolfskin
Jack Wolfskin is a German outdoor brand, founded in 1981 in Frankfurt am Main and today based in Idstein. The brand develops functional clothing, shoes and equipment for mountaineering, trekking and urban outdoor use, using well-known technologies such as Texapore. With more than 40 years of experience, Jack Wolfskin has grown into an international brand with hundreds of stores and thousands of employees worldwide, active in dozens of countries.