Belstaff

So here’s the thing about Belstaff. They’re a heritage fashion brand, over a hundred years of history, iconic outerwear, the kind of name that carries serious weight. But when we took over development of their e-commerce platform four years ago, the online experience didn’t match that. The site was technically functional but not commercially optimised. What followed was a complete transformation of how Belstaff sells online, and it’s been a key part of their return to profitability through significantly increased conversion rates.

The Awards Speak for Themselves

The site picked up three W3 Awards in 2023. Best Fashion Website, Best Use of Photography, and Best Homepage. That’s not us patting ourselves on the back. That’s external validation that the thing we built actually works, and works well enough to set a benchmark in the fashion industry.

Design That Actually Converts

We rebuilt the site around best-practice UX principles, but the real story here is what that translates to commercially. Every touchpoint, browsing, buying, exploring the brand, was redesigned with conversion in mind. Not in a cynical, dark-patterns way, but by making the experience so intuitive and engaging that people actually want to complete a purchase. That shift in user experience has been instrumental in driving the revenue growth that’s contributed to Belstaff’s return to profitability.

Over 200 Countries, Five Storefronts, One Front-End

The platform ships to over 200 countries and territories through five storefronts, all unified in a single front-end. Five languages across ten regional variants, full localisation, global accessibility. That sounds simple when you say it quickly, but the engineering to make that seamless, so a customer in Germany has the same quality experience as someone in New York, is significant. And it matters commercially, because every friction point you remove in an international checkout is revenue you keep.

The Tech Under the Hood

At its core, this is a headless Shopify Plus build with a custom SvelteKit front-end. We integrate with Shopify Payments and Shopify Checkout for PCI-compliant payments, and the whole thing is built as a fully composable architecture. What that means in practice is speed and flexibility. We can swap out any part of the stack without rebuilding the whole thing.

Beyond the storefront, the site runs on our bespoke content platform and CMS. We built custom content pages and custom product page templates, giving the editorial and merchandising teams full control over how products and stories are presented across the site. The platform handles multi-region, multi-language content management and sitemap generation, product export feeds, a custom back-in-stock integration, and a sophisticated media CDN pipeline.

The composable stack also integrates Voyado for omnichannel marketing, Klaviyo for back-in-stock notifications and email marketing, Zendesk for customer service, Klarna and Avalara AvaTax for payments and tax compliance, and Cloudflare powering the edge infrastructure. Pandectes handles compliance and privacy management.

But the piece that really moves the needle on conversion, and this is where a lot of the commercial impact comes from, is Nosto.

AI-Powered Personalisation with Nosto

This is probably the most impactful integration we’ve delivered on the site. The Nosto integration delivers a completely AI-driven, personalised experience for every single visitor. It analyses browsing patterns and purchase history in real time to deliver tailored product recommendations, creates dynamic content zones that adapt to individual preferences, personalises search results and category pages, and powers intelligent cross-sell and upsell suggestions throughout the entire customer journey.

It even feeds into behaviour-triggered email campaigns with personalised product selections. The result is that every customer interaction feels uniquely crafted to them. And when the experience feels that personal, people buy more. It’s that simple. This integration has been one of the biggest drivers of conversion improvement across the site.

Payments That Meet People Where They Are

The platform supports all the major payment options you’d expect. Credit and debit cards, PayPal, Google Pay, Apple Pay, Amazon Pay, Klarna, plus regional methods like Sofort and iDeal. Every payment method you add is another barrier to purchase you remove. When you’re operating across over 200 countries, local payment preferences matter enormously.

Data-Driven Everything

We’re running GA4 for comprehensive tracking, Microsoft Clarity for user behaviour insights and session recordings, ABTasty for A/B testing and conversion optimisation, and GTM for tag management, with Hotjar and ContentSquare providing additional behavioural analytics. That’s not just tooling for the sake of it. It gives us deep insight into what’s working and what isn’t, and lets us make continuous, data-driven improvements. The platform doesn’t stand still. We’re always iterating.

Enterprise Integration and Physical Retail

The system connects to Oracle NetSuite ERP through Patchworks Integration, keeping inventory, orders, and financials in sync across the business. We built a sophisticated omnichannel fulfilment setup using Shopify Flows and custom front-end logic to intelligently route orders across channels. And it extends to six physical locations across the UK, US, and Germany through Shopify POS Pro, delivering a unified online and in-store experience. When we talk about omnichannel, we actually mean it.

99.9%+ Uptime, Even on Phoenix Day

The platform runs at 99.9%+ uptime, including during Belstaff’s signature Phoenix Day sales events where traffic spikes significantly. The Cloudflare-powered infrastructure ensures fast load times and reliable performance globally. You can’t convert customers on a site that’s down, so this reliability is foundational to the commercial results we’ve achieved together.

Good Enough for Shopify to Show Off

Belstaff’s e-commerce platform is so impressive that Shopify themselves feature it as an official case study to showcase their platform’s capabilities. That’s a pretty strong endorsement, and it’s a testament to what four years of continuous partnership and iteration can produce.

The Bottom Line

After four years of continuous development, Belstaff’s e-commerce platform isn’t just award-winning. It’s commercially transformative. The combination of AI-driven personalisation through Nosto, a robust and flexible headless architecture, a bespoke content platform managing the editorial and product experience, and relentless optimisation has driven significant increases in conversion rates and average order values. This work has been a key contributor to Belstaff returning to profitability, proving that world-class e-commerce infrastructure isn’t just a technical achievement. It’s a business one.

The content infrastructure challenges we solved at Belstaff, managing custom content pages, custom product templates, multi-language delivery, and media pipelines at enterprise scale, are the same challenges our platform Foir was built to address from the ground up.

“We just wanted to take a moment to express our gratitude for the transition to the new site. Everyone at Belstaff LOVES the look and feel, and keep complimenting it! Please pass over our thanks to each member of the team for the outstanding work. Thank you for your hard work, collaboration, quick communications when we had queries on the spot and the positive impact you’ve made on our digital presence. Your contributions are integral to the success of our projects, and we are grateful for your continued support.”

Nikolai, Belstaff

Learn More:

Listen to the full story of the website brand relaunch in the Shopify x Belstaff interview

Read the official Shopify case study