Lavenham

We have worked with Lavenham across several years and two distinct versions of their store. That continuity matters. Understanding a client's business well enough to recommend changing direction is a different kind of value to simply building what you are asked for.

The first store was built headless using Shopify Hydrogen and Contentful, with rich editorial content woven through the shopping experience and a distinctive navigation system with a left-side control box holding both product information and menu items.

Over time it became clear that conversion was being affected and development costs were climbing. New features that would have been straightforward in Shopify Liquid required significant effort. We worked through the options with Lavenham and made the call together to move back to a more standard Shopify architecture.

The transition preserved the UI and moved the Contentful editorial content directly into Shopify using metafields for dynamic content layouts. The result maintained the feel of the original store while making the platform significantly more manageable and cost-effective to run and extend.

The build serves both the global store and a separate Japanese branch with its own content and product set. Global-E handles the checkout gateway, giving Lavenham the international infrastructure their market requires.