An interview with Maplin MD, Ollie Marshall, discussing what made the business pivot technically from open source to SaaS and the positive impact this has had on operational capability.
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Tl;dr
- Why Maplin needed to review its ecommerce technology stack & what was the impetus to change
- How the internal development team has found transitioning from Magento to Shopify
- What the new Shopify tech stack looks like
- Advice for other retailers considering changing their ecommerce platform model
It’s fair to say that Maplin’s MD Ollie Marshall has a been a Magento Open Source loyalist and enthusiast for many years. We recorded an episode with him two years ago on how Maplin built a scalable Magento solution, at which point open source aligned with the business and technical needs.
When he announced that Maplin’s ecommerce stack would pivot, moving away from open source to a new SaaS solution, we thought it would be interesting to find what brought about the strategic change of direction, and why now.
In this episode we explore the commercial decision-making path, understanding why Ollie decided SaaS was the right approach and what made Shopify the right fit.
Discussion notes
- What brought about the need to review your tech stack & what was the impetus to change?
- You’ve gone with Shopify and it’s clearly a different ecosystem and dev mindset: what are the key differences you’ve noticed in building on Shopify vs. Magento?
- You have an internal development team used to working with Magento, how has the team found the transition to working with Shopify?
- How have you built your ecommerce stack around Shopify: theme vs. headless, 1P apps, 3P apps, key integrations?
- How do you find plugging in and testing new apps and 3rd parties vs. Magento world
- How did you manage the change: did you do it all internally?
- Question on the Akeneo piece
- What advice do you have for other retailers considering change?
- What’s next in your roadmap – new integrations, features?
Want to suggest a topic or guest for a future episode? Contact us via the website or on LinkedIn.
