We started working for the Shoepassion group in 2021 with the Heinrich Dinkelacker project. This is a slightly more intimate brand of the group, which produces premium men’s footwear. The Shoepassion group itself, meanwhile, owns several footwear brands and operates in several European markets. Among others in Germany and Austria, where we had the opportunity to implement their stores.
We have already mentioned the Heinrich Dinkelacker project here. The choice of this slightly smaller service for the beginning of the cooperation with Shoepassion was not accidental. This solution was entirely intentional – the client was able to see how our team works, and we were able to show our skills in migrating to Shopify Plus. After the successful completion of the project, we were able to develop the Shoepassion brand store with double the power. We started working on this project in February 2022.
The client approached us with the need to change the platform of their main store. Like many fast-growing brands, the team began to feel that the existing platform was no longer keeping up with their needs. Technological limitations, the platform’s lack of flexibility for new ideas, and maintenance costs all added up to the need to find another solution. We proposed Shopify Plus development to the client, which, with its technological capabilities and additional features, perfectly met the brand’s needs, opened it up to new horizons, and enabled them to implement creative solutions.
The main task of our development team was to create a new store based on the graphic designs provided by the client and the visual identity of the Shoepassion brand. The same model of cooperation was used for our first joint project, Heinrich Dinkelacker. So we knew it would work great.
In addition to creating the store itself, we also did the implementation and integration with ERP (Pixie), PIM, and integrated active campaigns, implemented by the client’s internal team, into the project.
Last but not least, we wrote a custom application that checked inventory at each of Shoepassion’s stores throughout Germany. It is integrated with Shopify’s POS so that all data is kept up-to-date. In addition, it allows ordering a custom shoe repair and maintenance service for an individual customer. The project also includes a Shoepassion mobile app.
Shoepassion’s store is one of the first to take advantage of the new features introduced in Shopify 2.0. We’re talking about native product filtering, reusable content sections on all subpages, and the use of “meta fields” – additional fields for data to streamline content management, among other things.
The proposed structure worked perfectly. Shoepassion was our second joint project with the Group, having had experience in the pilot version (Heinrich) we knew what to pay attention to so that together with the client we could develop the brand even further. The store was expanded with more modules and elements, the ideas for which came up during the work on the new store. At the moment, the whole thing meets the initial expectations and business assumptions of the project.
Michal Wilk (front-end developer): I had the most fun in this project working with the client, Don is always optimistic and willing to compromise. Certainly, the biggest challenge was the extensive product filtering system and organizing the measurement systems for other locations (EU, US, UK). And as for my favorite features of this project, the ability to select shoe model preferences (women/men) the first time a user enters the site works very well. On subsequent entries, the preference is remembered and shows the content and products selected for that group.
Kamil Patyk (CTO mohi.to): Working on the project was very interesting, as it very often presented us with new challenges and the need to find solutions in the context of the implementation of individual functionalities in Shopify. In all this, an important role was played by the awareness of technology on the client’s side, above all in the person of Don, with whom we spent a lot of time analyzing and synchronizing activities in the implementation of individual tasks. In addition to a lot of standard functionality for e-commerce, we took advantage of the opportunities provided by Shopify Plus. Challenges certainly include an extensive filtering system or preparing an application for Shopify POS and shoe repair services.
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