Background
Harvey Nichols, the iconic British luxury department store, recognised the urgent need to modernise its digital presence in line with rapidly evolving e-commerce demands. The ambition was to deliver an online experience that matched the prestige and service of its physical stores, whilst providing the flexibility to scale with future retail innovations.
The challenge lay in moving away from a legacy Magento platform — which had become increasingly difficult to scale and maintain — to a fully headless React architecture. This shift was essential to overcome performance bottlenecks, improve developer agility, and unlock the ability to deliver a more seamless and immersive shopping journey for Harvey Nichols’ discerning customer base.
Key Technology Used
Headless Commerce:
The core architectural approach that decoupled the front end from the back end, enabling Harvey Nichols to integrate modern services, improve scalability, and accelerate feature development independent of legacy system constraints.
React:
Formed the foundation of a modern, component-based front end, delivering a fast and responsive user experience that aligned with the expectations of a luxury retailer.
Express:
Served as the back-end framework, powering APIs and integrations required to support a headless commerce model and connect with third-party retail systems.
Node:
Provided the runtime environment for building scalable server-side applications, ensuring reliability and performance under high traffic loads.
SCSS:
Enabled structured, reusable styling with advanced theming capabilities, ensuring a consistent and refined design language across the digital platform.
Outcome
The migration away from Magento delivered a step change in digital performance, improving server response times, enhancing the relevance of product discovery, and strengthening engagement across both desktop and mobile. The result was a faster, more resilient e-commerce foundation that created a digital experience worthy of the Harvey Nichols brand.
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