A strategy-led migration built for speed, increasing profit margin, and global scale
Karl Lagerfeld partnered with Domaine to migrate from Salesforce Commerce Cloud to Shopify with one clear mandate: reduce escalating platform and maintenance costs while gaining the agility to scale and innovate across their global footprint. What began as a technically driven replatform quickly evolved into a conversion-focused transformation – balancing speed, performance, and brand experience under a fast-approaching platform renewal timeline.
Escaping platform complexity to refocus on growth
Karl Lagerfeld was operating on Salesforce Commerce Cloud (SFCC) with a high Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and significant technical overhead. Too much time and budget were tied up in maintenance, limiting the brand’s ability to invest in growth, experimentation, and customer experience. With a Salesforce contract renewal approaching, the Karl team had an opportunity to migrate away from SFCC, but needed a fast turnaround – without compromising their global operations across 35 markets, complex integrations, and deep data dependencies. Domaine led the migration from SFCC to Shopify, aligning platform decisions directly to cost efficiencies, operational simplicity, and long-term flexibility.
A replatform that evolved into conversion optimization
The project initially scoped for a like-for-like migration, retaining the existing design. As trust built and momentum grew, the scope expanded to include targeted UX and design improvements focused on conversion. The Domaine team unified design files into a cohesive system and optimized the shopping experience where it matters most. Product Detail Pages were restructured with clearer layouts, visual size and colour selectors, responsive carousels, and improved image zoom. Navigation was redesigned to bring structure and clarity to previously unorganized menus, while Product Listing Pages were refined with better filtering and product card layouts. Each change was made with restraint and purpose — elevating usability and performance while emphasising the brand’s fashion-forward identity.
Custom solutions for global complexity
As a globally known luxury brand, a non-negotiable for the platform migration was continuing and improving their expansion and success in international markets. TCO was a challenge with SFCC, so the move to Shopify needed to support international scale without multiplying overheads. Domaine engineered integrations that allowed globally and non-globally enabled markets to coexist on a single Shopify instance. By leveraging newly released Shopify Markets capabilities, the team avoided the need for multiple storefronts — unlocking significant efficiency for Karl while preserving market-level flexibility.
"The benefit became especially clear in the Middle East. KARL LAGERFELD launched Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates on Shopify on 28 October after the replatform, using Shopify to enable the markets, push the right product data, and test content. Launching Saudi Arabia and the UAE was much smoother than it would have been on our previous setup. We were done in a few weeks, so we were able to see immediate value during Peak.
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James Pollak
Director of Ecommerce Operations, Karl Lagerfeld
Global reach, personal touch
To support global campaigns, Domaine also built a custom content scheduling system that allows the team to schedule content by market, section, and block. This capability is now actively used to coordinate launches and campaigns across regions without developer involvement. Additional technical optimizations included app customizations for PDP sizing visualization, enhanced data-layer implementation, and selective replacement of third-party tools with native Shopify functionality where it delivered the same outcome more efficiently.
Results: a leaner platform built for confidence, control, and scale
By migrating from Salesforce Commerce Cloud to Shopify, KARL LAGERFELD has a more agile global commerce foundation designed to reduce TCO, simplify operations, and support continued growth. Delivered in just 6.5 months, the new Shopify ecosystem consolidates 35 markets and eight languages within a single store and domain structure, giving teams greater self-sufficiency while supporting localized pricing, language, and currency. Alongside a more streamlined global infrastructure, conversion-focused UX improvements have strengthened key shopping journeys and reduced friction at checkout, with Shop Pay now accounting for 21% of payment share year to date.
"Working with Domaine, we had a team that brought deep technical knowledge of Shopify alongside an understanding of the expectations that come with a global fashion brand like KARL LAGERFELD. The site had to be performant and represent the brand properly, but it also had to work for the teams running the business day to day. That balance was really important to us throughout the migration, and the partnership continues with that same strong alignment."
James Pollak
Director of Ecommerce Operations, Karl Lagerfeld
"With specialist expertise in enterprise Shopify migrations and deep understanding of multi-market operations, Domaine was an incredible partner for a project of this ambition. Karl Lagerfeld is exactly the kind of brand that will come out ahead by making this move, and we're excited to be the ones powering their next chapter of growth."
Apsara Chidambaram
Head of Partnerships, EMEA at Shopify
