Consolidating WCF's multi-brand portfolio onto Shopify
Services:
Platform consolidation strategy
Technical architecture and design system
ERP and third-party integrations
Data and analytics infrastructure
Digital marketing
TCO analysis
Ongoing consultancy and roadmap
WCF has grown by acquisition for more than a century. Each new brand arrived on its own platform, with its own agency, so the group was paying for duplicated builds, support and marketing tools. With no shared infrastructure, every new acquisition hindered their ability to scale. The retail portfolio spans garden and turf care, womenswear and catalogue clothing - each with its own audience, its own trading patterns, and its own legacy systems.
WCF decided to consolidate the retail portfolio onto one platform and tech stack as part of a wider digital transformation, with an architecture any future brands can drop into. These are trading brands with high volumes of traffic and orders, and in some cases the brands themselves were merging, not just the platforms. They chose Unified to lead the programme, drawn by deep Shopify expertise across complex multi-brand architectures, with SEO, data, development and integrations in-house so nothing falls between agencies.
The results
The challenge
WCF's retail brands had grown up on a mix of Magento and custom-built platforms, run by different agencies, with no single view of customers or stock across the group. Each brand had its own systems, its own integrations and its own way of doing things. Payment options were limited, content was slow and awkward to update across sites, and search, merchandising and the overall customer experience were not where they needed to be. There was no single view of customer or stock data, and development was slow and expensive to run.
Because some of these brands were merging as businesses, the work went beyond migration. Some are catalogue businesses where orders arrive by post and phone as well as online, with call centres and warehouses running in step with the website. Understanding how each business operated - not just each website - shaped everything about how we approached things.
Why WCF chose Unified, and how we approached it
We worked with WCF's leadership team to understand the options - different approaches, timelines and the trade-offs that came with each - before developing a full programme roadmap. The direction was a phased rollout on a reusable architecture, with each brand moving in turn rather than all at once.
Each brand runs on its own Shopify Plus store, sharing a common architecture and design system, Klaviyo runs across the group for email and customer data, with a common approach to analytics and ERP integrations handled per brand.
The phased approach also meant we could address what each brand specifically needed. For Bella di Notte, a particular consideration was tracking and reporting as orders come through both the website and the call centre, so getting a clean picture of revenue across channels had to come before the migration itself. For ProGreen and A1, the priority was consolidating two distinct brands onto a single store without damaging A1's established search visibility and brand equity. That meant rationalising a complex shipping matrix, building navigation and taxonomy that worked for both trade and retail audiences, and migrating complex product, customer and order data - including trade pricing tiers and phone order processing - across to Shopify. With a tight deadline to launch before the peak spring/summer trading season, we ran an extensive discovery and scoping phase first to plan, prioritise and sequence the work carefully. For the Home Shopping brands, it was building the catalogue features their customers rely on - media codes, garment alterations, priority delivery - all wired into their ERP.
A shared design system meant the brands started from a common base and as part of each individual project we layered in the brand-specific styling and functionality that each business and its customers need.
In their words
"We brought Unified in to replatform our entire retail ecommerce estate, from different legacy systems. The project management was exceptional throughout: communication was clear, third parties were handled well, and everything was delivered on time. We saw increased conversions after launch, and the team was highly responsive and great to work with. What stood out most was how well Unified's values and culture aligned with ours.”
Andrew Mochrie, COO, WCF Group [TO CONFIRM]
What we have delivered so far
ProGreen and A1 Lawn merged onto one Shopify Plus store with two storefronts, bringing B2B and B2C together
Bella di Notte migrated off Magento onto Shopify Plus,
Country Collection, The Classic Boutique and James Meade launched onto Shopify Plus, with bespoke catalogue features built for their audience
Three ERPs integrated across the group - Khaos Control, MNP and Elucid - with Klaviyo and a common analytics approach running across all brands
Four Shopify websites live, across three sectors, all trading throughout, on one shared architecture and design system
From project to partner
As each brand went live, the work moved into an ongoing programme: monthly delivery alongside larger projects and a roadmap prioritised with WCF. Features and functionality developed for one brand can be rolled out across the group, so the shared codebase compounds in value over time. The result is a lower total cost of ownership, less management overhead, and a clearer way for WCF to run and grow its retail estate.