The Challenge: A Cautionary Tale in Headless Overkill
When Outdoor Voices came to us, they were operating a hybrid headless Shopify site—where the backend relied on Shopify, but the frontend was built entirely custom and decoupled from Shopify’s Liquid framework.
At a glance, this setup might seem like an innovative choice. In reality, it was a maintenance nightmare.
Every update—be it a new feature rollout, a change to the PDP, or even something as simple as a promo banner—required intensive developer intervention. Shopify’s native functionality was essentially locked out, and instead of speeding things up, the headless setup created friction across teams, costs, and timelines.
It’s a trap we’ve seen other high-growth brands fall into: complex builds created by technically savvy dev teams who don’t always account for the operational needs of ecommerce managers, marketers, and merchandisers. What you gain in modularity, you often lose in speed and usability.
For Outdoor Voices, it meant missed opportunities and delayed optimizations in a competitive retail landscape.
Our Approach: Rebuilding with Flexibility in Mind
Rather than reinventing the entire visual identity, we focused on translating the existing design system into Shopify-native templates—leveraging Liquid to its fullest potential.
We began by auditing the tangled infrastructure, documenting how data flowed between the custom frontend and Shopify’s backend. Then, we carefully decoupled what no longer served the brand, untangling a mess of unnecessary complexity and starting fresh with a fully integrated Shopify theme.
The goal: maintain the brand’s distinct look and feel, while restoring functionality, speed, and flexibility to the ecommerce team.
Key deliverables included:
- A completely replatformed Shopify storefront using Liquid templates
- Production-ready Figma files with annotated UI elements
- A robust global component library for content and product storytelling
- Seamless integrations with essential tools like Klaviyo, Afterpay, and Loop Returns
- Shopify Search & Discovery-powered filtering, upsells, and swatches
- Checkout extensibility planning and a migration roadmap from legacy customizations
This wasn’t about making flashy design changes. It was about making smart, scalable ones.
Outcome: From Development Bottleneck to Ecommerce Velocity
With the new Shopify build, Outdoor Voices regained control over their site—unlocking native features, reducing reliance on developers for routine updates, and restoring sanity to their day-to-day workflows.
Now, their ecommerce team can iterate faster, launch campaigns more easily, and confidently take advantage of Shopify’s ongoing feature releases. And because the design system was preserved and enhanced, the brand experience remained seamless to the customer.
For a business as beloved and high-performing as Outdoor Voices, that flexibility matters.
Final Word
This project is a case study in restraint—and in practical, platform-native thinking. It’s easy to over-engineer when chasing innovation, but true digital craftsmanship lies in building something both beautiful and sustainable.
We’re proud to have helped Outdoor Voices shed the weight of technical debt and move forward with agility and confidence.
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