BLUNDSTONE

Blundstone has made boots in Tasmania since 1870. Its direct-to-consumer stores sell to customers across the US, Australia and New Zealand.

Its Adobe Commerce platform had become costly to run and slow to change. Working with DEPT®, we led the move to Shopify Plus: the architecture, a custom theme, the systems behind it, and a phased launch across the US and Australia, then New Zealand.

One platform, too many compromises.

Blundstone’s US, Australian and New Zealand stores ran on Adobe Commerce. The customer journey had fallen behind the brand, and behind the scenes every change touched several systems through a middleware layer.

The brief was to give customers a better journey on Shopify Plus without losing what the business relied on: orders flowing to the warehouse, product data from one source, and strict rules about which boots could ship where.

One theme, three markets.

We designed the Shopify Plus architecture and built one custom theme behind every store, so the US, Australia and New Zealand share the same components while keeping their own catalogue, pricing and content.

Underneath, an iPaaS middleware layer connects Shopify to Blundstone’s ERP and warehouse. Salsify feeds product data into every store, Klaviyo and reviews.io are built into the journey, and customers can edit orders after checkout. The US and Australia launched first, followed by New Zealand.

The right boot, in the right state.

Blundstone was phasing out older styles made with PFAS, and a growing number of US states restrict their sale. Those boots could still ship to states that allow them, but never to states that don’t.

Express wallets made that harder, because a customer can change their delivery address inside Apple Pay or Google Pay after the cart has been checked. We built the rule into checkout itself, so it runs against the final address and a restricted boot can never complete an order to a restricted state.

A platform the teams run themselves.

Blundstone now runs every market from one Shopify Plus platform and one theme, so a change made once reaches the US, Australia and New Zealand together.

Product data, orders, email and reviews move between systems without manual work, and the compliance rules hold at checkout, however a customer chooses to pay.