Fashion to Figure, a fashion and apparel brand owned by the Saadia Group, reached out to The Stable in June 2022 to take their website headless using Shopify’s new headless solutions, Hydrogen + Oxygen, released in the spring of 2022.
Our client had three important goals. First and foremost, Fashion to Figure wanted to deliver a best-in-class experience to its customers by being one of the first brands on Shopify Hydrogen. Secondly, the website needed to serve as a template for future projects of the group and lay the foundation for international expansion. Thirdly, the website needed to be fully launched and tested in time for the 2022 holidays, which only gave our team about three months to complete the work.
The challenges for this project were numerous. This was The Stable’s first time building in Hydrogen and coding in Oxygen, so we knew there would be a learning curve. Additionally, our team had to build several third-party integrations that did not exist with Shopify Hydrogen, such as an image and video app called Cloudinary, a commerce video platform called Fireworks, a Shop-the-Look app called Stylistics, and many others.
One of the most complex integrations was Algolia, a leading site search provider. Instead of using the existing Hydrogen-Algolia integration, our team decided to leverage Bedrock’s integration with Algolia (Bedrock is The Stable’s proprietary headless framework), built at the API level. Connecting to a third-party provider via API, gives brands added flexibility in the configuration and design but it can be time consuming to build from scratch.
For the duration of this project, our team worked closely with the Shopify Hydrogen team and Fashion to Figure to ensure the website would deliver a best-in-class eCommerce experience. This included following SEO best practices, meeting ADA compliance requirements, and building custom functionalities such as a cart script API that would reflect price discounts from the PDP to final checkout and deliver a better user experience.
Throughout this project, communication between stakeholders was paramount to delivering the build on time and meeting the client’s expectations for a fast, innovative, and custom website. By using Bedrock’s pre-built library of integrations, our development team saved the client 45+ hours of billable work, allowing our team to meet the ambitious deadline and focus the client’s budget on designing a more immersive experience.
After only a few weeks post-launch, The Fashion to Figure team has already seen an increase in site speed and conversion rate. Additionally, their internal team is enjoying the benefits of a headless CMS architecture, which allows quick changes to the website without the help of a developer. This project was a tremendous success for the client and for The Stable who added new skills under its saddle.
