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.
How we built it
Below are the headline technologies. The full stack runs deeper, with the supporting infrastructure and tooling that keeps everything fast, secure and reliable in production.
Headless Commerce
Decoupled storefront from backend, freeing the site to evolve without legacy constraints.
React
A fast, app-like storefront that feels seamless on every device.
Express
The connective layer linking the storefront to retail systems and services.
Node
The reliable engine running everything behind the scenes at scale.
SCSS
Consistent, refined styling that matches the brand across every page.
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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