How Westwing Scaled Their Home & Living E-commerce with Shopify

Introduction

Westwing built a custom e-commerce stack over ten years but found it difficult to scale and innovate at speed. They wanted a single, replicable solution that could roll out into new markets, deliver a seamless checkout, and maintain SEO value. Moving to Shopify offered a best-in-class platform with a headless backend and apps ecosystem. In this case study we walk through their approach, challenges, and results.

Challenge

By 2023 Westwing had grown into a multi-country retailer partnering with thousands of brands, but their in-house stack was fragile and hard to maintain. Rollouts took months, upgrade cycles were costly, and every local market needed a separate codebase. They needed a unified SaaS solution to streamline operations, accelerate time-to-market, and offload hosting and security concerns.

Solution

Westwing chose Shopify for its out-of-the-box commerce features plus deep customization. They split the project into two phases: a three-month sprint to build a core platform, followed by a planned regional rollout to twelve markets. The first live site was in Portugal in early 2024. By December 2024 all twelve countries were running a single Shopify store using Shopify Markets.

To preserve brand identity and SEO, Westwing went fullyheadless, separating frontend and backend. They used existing URLs, fonts and layouts while building a custom storefront. An adapted Shopify Checkout ported saved customer data securely, so returning shoppers had no friction. Meanwhile apps likeSalsifyhandled product information management andAlgoliapowered advanced site search.

Results

The migration to Shopify happened without downtime and customer engagement stayed high. Internal teams now spin up new markets in weeks instead of months. Using one codebase reduced maintenance overhead and centralized updates. Westwing’s tech team can focus on UX improvements, not infrastructure. Future features like pickup locations will plug into the existing headless setup quickly.

Key Lessons

This migration highlights how a SaaS commerce platform with a flexible API-driven backend can support global expansion, custom design needs, and data preservation. Choosing a vendor with a robust app ecosystem lets a retailer tap into best-in-class tools without rebuilding core functionality.