Full Commerce Overhaul - Tier-1 US Luggage & Bag Brand
Bag personalisation builder. Custom POS. Checkout extensions in Rust/Wasm. ADA compliance. GTM for multi-jurisdiction privacy. +29% PDP conversion rate.
The Situation
This client is a recognised name in the US luggage and bag market - a brand operating at a scale where every platform decision has direct revenue implications. When they brought BrainBox into the engagement, the scope was significant: a PDP rebuild, a bag personalisation builder built from scratch, a custom POS application for their retail operation, checkout extensibility, ADA compliance remediation, and a privacy-compliant GTM implementation covering California and international markets.
No single workstream was straightforward. Together, they constituted a full-scale Shopify platform overhaul against a live production store - with an internal development team already in place, a strict Git workflow requirement from the client side, and zero tolerance for regressions on checkout.
The theme itself presented its own complexity. Years of accumulated feature additions meant the codebase had conditional logic nested several layers deep in some templates. Working within it - rather than replacing it wholesale - required careful reading before a single line was touched.
This client's store handles tens of thousands of transactions per month. Performance, accessibility, and checkout reliability are not aspirational goals - they are operational requirements.
What We Built
The engagement ran across six distinct workstreams, some sequential and some in parallel. Each one was scoped independently before delivery began.
Bag Personalisation Builder
Built from scratch - a multi-step interactive configuration experience that allows customers to build a personalised bag across compartments, hardware options, material choices, and monogramming. The builder integrates with Shopify's product and variant architecture via metafields and renders a live preview as the customer makes selections. State management across the multi-step flow is handled client-side, with the final configuration submitted to cart as structured line item properties. This was the most technically complex single feature in the engagement.
Checkout Extensibility & Shopify Functions
Custom checkout UI extensions were deployed across the checkout flow - additional service selections, custom order attributes, and a promotional mechanic requiring cart transformation logic. Discount validation rules and checkout gate logic were built using Shopify Functions written in Rust/Wasm, running natively on Shopify's infrastructure with no performance overhead and no third-party middleware.
Custom POS Application
A purpose-built Shopify POS app was developed for the client's retail locations. The POS tile surfaces the personalisation builder options in-store, allowing retail staff to configure a custom bag on behalf of the customer and submit the order through the standard POS flow. Order attribution and fulfilment routing are handled correctly across both online and in-store channels - no manual reconciliation between the two.
ADA Compliance Remediation
A comprehensive ADA audit of the storefront was conducted, with specific focus on the PDP - the highest-traffic page and the most technically complex. Remediation covered keyboard navigation across all interactive states, ARIA labelling for the personalisation builder steps, focus management within the multi-step flow, colour contrast across all UI states, and screen reader compatibility. The personalisation builder's dynamic preview updates were particularly involved - ARIA live regions had to be implemented carefully to avoid flooding screen readers with redundant announcements.
GTM & Multi-Jurisdiction Privacy
Google Tag Manager was implemented with consent-gated firing logic for two distinct regulatory frameworks: California CCPA (opt-out model) and international markets (opt-in model). Consent signals are detected by jurisdiction and passed to GTM as data layer events - tags fire only when the appropriate consent state is confirmed for the visitor's detected region. This gave the client accurate attribution data for the first time in over two years.
PDP Rebuild & Swatch Management
The PDP was rebuilt on standard Shopify 2.0 architecture with a new section structure, improved Liquid render performance, and a native swatch management system using Shopify's built-in colour swatch feature - no third-party swatch app. Git flow was established with the client's internal team at the start of this workstream, with a branching protocol and PR review process both sides follow consistently.
The Results
The GTM and ADA work tend to get treated as compliance workstreams - important but separate from conversion. In this engagement, both had direct revenue impact. The CCPA-compliant consent implementation gave the client accurate channel attribution for the first time in years, correcting a significant marketing spend misallocation. The ADA remediation on the personalisation builder removed interaction failures that affected a broader segment of users than just those using assistive technology - focus management improvements and clearer error states benefited everyone.
Initial PDP rebuild and personalisation builder: 20 weeks. POS app and checkout extensions: parallel delivery alongside PDP work. Engagement ongoing.
Tech Stack
SHOPIFY
FUNCTIONS & BACKEND
POS
COMPLIANCE
ENGINEERING STANDARDS
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If you need checkout extensibility, a custom product configurator, POS integration, or ADA compliance work - and you need a team that can handle all of it against a live production store - let's talk.