Enterprise Shopify Development
Enterprise Shopify Development, Built for Speed and Built to Stay Current
Sub-second load time standard. Under 1% defect rate. 11+ years working exclusively on Shopify.
Theme architecture, Core Web Vitals, B2B and retail capability, custom applications — and the integrations into everything else an enterprise runs on: POS, ERP, OMS, WMS, CRM, PIM, and the iPaaS or data warehouse layer above them. Delivered by a dedicated squad that doesn’t rotate off your codebase.
The store works. It’s just slow, brittle, and hard to change.
Most enterprise Shopify stores we’re brought into aren’t broken. They’ve accumulated — a theme customized past the point of upgradeability, apps that each seemed reasonable, and a release process that everyone works around.
Execution risk
Performance treated as a cleanup task
Speed gets addressed after a build, once the damage is done. A build that can absorb what Shopify ships is an appreciating asset; one that can’t is a depreciating one. BRUNT rebuilt onto Shopify Horizon in the quiet window after Black Friday, before anything was broken — their CEO called it a discipline project.
A theme customized off the platform’s roadmap
Customization that fights Shopify’s architecture rather than extending it means every platform update becomes a migration. Brands in this position stop taking updates, which is the beginning of the next replatform.
Marketing blocked behind engineering
Aventon’s product launches used to consume a week of developer preparation; after product pages moved into a CMS, a launch became a 20-minute content task. Good Ranchers came off a headless stack and got their marketing team off the ticket queue entirely.
Shopify treated as though it ends at the storefront
The POS on the shop floor, the ERP finance closes in, the OMS routing orders — separating them from the storefront produces a store that demos well and can’t transact the way the business does.
Optimizing for the score instead of the revenue
A Lighthouse improvement that doesn’t move conversion is a number that made someone feel better. We instrument performance work against revenue per visitor and conversion rate, and verify the impact afterward.
Organizational risk
Rotating teams and rebuilt context
We staff non-fractional squads and don’t rotate people off, which means the engineer debugging your checkout in month nine is the one who built it in month two.
Communication routed through account management
We give clients direct Slack access to the engineers writing their code, which is a small structural choice with a large effect on velocity.
An internal team that’s being managed rather than augmented
Bringing in a partner alongside an internal team frequently adds coordination overhead instead of capacity, because roles were never delineated. That’s a scoping conversation, and it’s better held before the engagement than during it.
Experience
18+
Years of Unlocking Growth
Scale
$3.14B+
in GMV Migrated to Shopify
Partnership
1 of 5
Founding NA Shopify Platinum Partners
Precision
94.7%
Implementation Predictability
Clients
8
Unicorns & Counting
Sub-second load time standard, and mobile-first since 2016.
Five things we’ve concluded about building on Shopify
Eleven years working exclusively on this platform.
Performance is a growth lever
Performance affects every session, which means it compounds in a way that individual features don’t. AG1’s load times fell 400% to under a second across a headless PWA that carried six years of growth from $15M to $150M in annual revenue, with time on site up 81%. Four Sigmatic’s PWA launch cut load times below a second and bounce rate fell 90%.
Budget for speed the way you budget for money
A speed budget is a limit agreed before development, enforced per release, and checked before merge. Retrofitting speed is one of the more expensive things you can do, and it only ever gets you back to baseline.
Build with the platform’s grain
Follett proved the point at the hardest end: financial aid as a payment tender, textbook rentals, and course materials all ran on Shopify’s core primitives. Dollar Shave Club’s rebuild on the Dawn theme was chosen specifically so the store would keep receiving automatic updates.
Enterprise Shopify development is stack development
The POS, ERP, OMS, WMS, CRM, PIM, and wholesale channels around Shopify are where the business’s actual operating logic lives. We scope the connections as part of the build rather than after it, including the enterprise middleware tier larger organizations already run on. → Integrations · Accessibility + Compliance Standards Design
Mobile is the site
Most of your traffic and most of your marginal revenue are mobile, and a desktop-first build with a responsive pass is a different product than a mobile-first one. We’ve built mobile-first since 2016.
The work
Theme architecture and re-theming
Moving to Shopify’s latest theme architecture, built for operability. BRUNT’s pre-emptive re-theme to Shopify Horizon added 20 points of Google Lighthouse performance.
Performance and Core Web Vitals
Performance auditing, speed budgeting enforced through the development cycle, mobile performance optimization, and conversion impact modeling.
Capability extension
B2B and wholesale, POS and retail, international, and warehousing — native Shopify capabilities activated and configured for how your business actually operates.
Enterprise systems integration
The stack Shopify has to work inside: POS, ERP, OMS, WMS, CRM, PIM, and wholesale or EDI channels, connected as part of the build. → Integrations
Enterprise middleware, ETL and data warehousing
Where you already run an iPaaS platform or a data warehouse, we integrate through that layer rather than around it.
Security and compliance, end to end
Authentication, secrets management, PCI scope, privacy obligations, and accessibility conformance treated as architecture inputs. → Accessibility + Compliance Standards Design
Application development
Custom back-office and customer-facing applications, and Shopify Functions where checkout or discount logic genuinely requires custom behavior.
QA and release engineering
Manual and automated testing, a defined code freeze, demo, and deploy cadence, and a defect rate we hold ourselves to.
What a development engagement commits to
| Commitment | Acceptance criterion |
|---|---|
| Load time | Sub-second standard, measured on mobile under real network conditions |
| Speed budget | Agreed per release and checked before merge, not audited afterward |
| Defect rate | Under 1% |
| Peak stability | 99.9% uptime, holding through Black Friday and comparable traffic events |
| Team | Named, dedicated, non-fractional — no rotation off your codebase |
| Access | Direct Slack to the engineers writing your code |
| Stack integration | Connections to POS, ERP, OMS, WMS, CRM and PIM scoped in the build, not deferred |
| Upgradeability | Every customization documented with its cost in future platform flexibility |
The last row is the one most often missing from a build that otherwise went well.
How a development engagement runs
Discovery and audit
Weeks 1–3
Technical audit, UX review, performance baseline, enterprise systems inventory, roadmap definition.
Agile build sprints
Ongoing, two-week cycles
Feature releases and migrations, with sprint planning Monday, daily standups, QA and code freeze the second Friday, demo and deploy the following Monday.
Run and optimize
Continuous
Performance tuning, CRO testing, maintenance, platform updates.
Timelines: Aventon arrived on a default theme where work that should take two to three weeks was stretching to eight to twelve. A well-scoped re-theme or feature build runs against a real technical baseline established in the first three weeks.
Where development usually starts
A theme that’s aged out
Customized past upgradeability, slow, and difficult to change. Aventon arrived on a default theme with a codebase that required a deployment to update content.
Core Web Vitals that won’t hold
Fixed once, regressed within two releases, because nothing enforced a budget. Four Sigmatic’s instability came from development running through freelancers each with their own coding style.
Mobile conversion below desktop by more than the category norm
BRUNT’s audience of trade workers shopped on mobile, where degraded performance had turned the funnel leaky; mobile conversions rose 40.7% in under two quarters.
A B2B or wholesale channel to launch
Shopify’s native B2B capability handles more than most brands expect — account structures, price lists, payment terms — with EDI integrated where a retail partner mandates it.
Enterprise systems that don’t talk to the storefront
A POS the site can’t see inventory through, an ERP finance reconciles by hand. → Integrations
A headless stack you can’t sustain
Good Ranchers exited NextJS and Node.js for Shopify Horizon in eight weeks, cutting total cost of ownership 45%. → Composable Commerce
Anatta’s Agentic Operating System
Every build runs on one system.
Senior engineers paired with an agentic framework that absorbs the commodity execution — scaffolding, test coverage, documentation — so the senior time goes to architecture and judgment.
See how we workDevelopment work we’ve run
BRUNT
85% YoY growth and a $2.5M single-day sales volume with no drop in site performance
Explore the BRUNT success storyAventon
Product launches from a week of dev prep to a 20-minute content task, conversion up 21.8%
Explore the Aventon success storyAG1
Load times cut 400% to under a second, on architecture that carried $15M to $150M in annual revenue
Explore the AG1 success storyDollar Shave Club
Bounce down 24%, new account registration up 90%, and CRO throughput up 400%
Explore the Dollar Shave Club success storyGood Ranchers
Off headless onto Shopify Horizon in eight weeks — 45% lower TCO, mobile PDPs 67% faster
Explore the Good Ranchers success storyMack Weldon
Five years, two redesigns, a rebrand, 34 product launches, and 130+ A/B tests
Explore the Mack Weldon success storyWe knew where we needed to go, and Anatta arrived with exactly those things — we were on the same page.
Daniel JamesCTO, Aventon
I have never experienced that level of output at any point in our history.
Kevin SakamotoSenior Director of Product Management, Dollar Shave Club
Ten questions to ask any Shopify development partner
Worth asking us, and worth asking everyone else on your list.
- Who specifically is on my team, and will they still be on it in month nine?
- Do I talk to the engineers, or to someone who talks to the engineers?
- What’s your defect rate, and how do you measure it?
- What’s your speed budget process, and when in the cycle is it enforced?
- How do you decide between a Shopify native primitive and a custom build?
- What will each of your customizations cost me in future upgradeability?
- After this project, what can my marketing team ship without you?
- Show me a Core Web Vitals improvement that held for a year.
- How do you tie performance work to conversion, not just to the score?
- If my internal team is involved, where exactly is the line?
Ten Questions to Ask Any Shopify Development Partner
One page. Name and email.
Frequently asked questions
Do we need headless to get the performance we want?
Usually not. Most enterprise Shopify stores that are slow are slow because of app load, unoptimized media, third-party scripts, and theme architecture — addressable on Shopify’s native architecture at a fraction of the cost and complexity. If the answer turns out to be yes, that work is Composable Commerce.
How long does a re-theme take?
A re-theme onto Shopify Horizon from an existing theme is a matter of weeks. Coming off a headless stack takes longer — Good Ranchers took eight weeks. A re-theme is not a redesign; we’d rather scope them separately.
Can you work alongside our internal development team?
Yes, and about half our engagements do. Typically we take platform architecture, performance, and deep Shopify specialization, and your team keeps the domain logic they understand better than we will.
Will your customizations block us from taking Shopify updates?
That’s the failure mode we design against. We favor Shopify’s native primitives even when a custom version would be slightly better, and document what any customization costs in future flexibility.
How do you measure performance improvements?
Against conversion rate and revenue per visitor, with Core Web Vitals as a diagnostic rather than the goal. We capture a baseline first, model the expected conversion impact, and then verify it.
Does this cover integrations with our other enterprise systems?
Yes — the POS, ERP, OMS, WMS, CRM, PIM, and wholesale channels are where your operating logic lives, and we scope those connections inside the build. → Integrations
Why not just hire in-house?
Sometimes you should. Where a partner wins is depth of platform specialization and the ability to add senior capacity without adding management overhead.
Send us your Lighthouse report and your backlog.
