Christiania Glasmagasin, rebuilt on Shopify Plus

A platform that slowed every change

Christiania Glasmagasin had run on Magento 2 for five years. In that time the online store grew to around 8,000 SKUs, sold only to the Norwegian market.

“Magento 2 worked, but it was heavy to work with day-to-day. Everything had to be coded and developed — even small changes required significant resources. In specialist retail, things need to move quickly, and that flexibility was something we didn’t have on Magento.”

Katrine Steiro, Christiania Glasmagasin

A deadline set by peak season

The biggest worry was time. The switch had to happen right before peak season, and a project that dragged on would have put the busiest weeks of the year at risk.

Their previous agencies specialised in Magento. For the move they needed a team that knew both platforms.

“What decided our choice of Think Commerce was their unique knowledge of both platforms — they knew Magento well enough to understand where we were coming from, and Shopify well enough to take us where we needed to go.”

Katrine Steiro, Christiania Glasmagasin

The migration

The project kept to its timeline. Read more about how we run a Magento to Shopify migration.

“The migration itself was tidy and well-structured, with clear project management from Think Commerce’s side. The timeline was met — which was critical for us given that we were moving right before peak season.”

“What pleasantly surprised us was the breadth of their expertise. They had a thorough understanding of everything that needs to be in place to avoid losing traffic during a platform switch, and a unique ability to see connections across systems. This meant we eliminated many potential problems before they even had a chance to emerge.”

Katrine Steiro, Christiania Glasmagasin

Christiania Glasmagasin says the move went relatively smoothly internally. Other ecommerce partners told them they had rarely seen such a clean platform switch.

Ongoing development on a retainer

After launch we moved on to a retainer. Since then we have:

• Shipped design changes quickly, so the user experience keeps improving.
• Built custom apps for needs that off-the-shelf apps do not cover.
• Built features for a business that runs physical shops and an online store at the same time. The online store can now use stock levels from each individual shop. For example, customers can sign up for notifications based on a particular shop’s stock.

“One of the biggest wins has been solutions that account for the fact that we operate both physical stores and an online store simultaneously. The ability to operate at stock level from each individual store has been invaluable.”

Katrine Steiro, Christiania Glasmagasin

Day to day, both teams follow the work in Teamwork, a shared platform for projects and priorities.

“This gives us visibility and predictability in ongoing development.”

Katrine Steiro, Christiania Glasmagasin