Aritzia is a global fashion brand known for its elevated ready-to-wear collections, timeless design, and curated in-house labels. This project focused on supporting the evolution of its ecommerce experience through modern headless architecture.

THE CHALLENGE

Aritzia’s ecommerce team set out to transform their site experience, frontend flexibility, and long-term scalability by moving to a modern headless architecture powered by PWA Kit. However, their Salesforce Commerce Cloud implementation had evolved over many years in support of their highly successful international business. This resulted in a dense ecosystem of integrations, customizations, and business rules that all needed to be supported in PWA Kit. DEMAND was engaged to build the connection layer between the innovated PWA frontend and the existing systems driving their business.

Key challenges included:

  • Extensive legacy integrations: Aritzia’s global operations relied on numerous third-party systems: payments, customer accounts, analytics and more, many tightly connected to SFCC’s traditional architecture.
  • Heavy customization footprint: Years of enhancements created layers of custom business logic across pipelines, controllers, and jobs that could not be disrupted during the transition.
  • API evolution: Salesforce’s move toward SCAPI required new patterns for data retrieval, session handling, and customer interactions not covered by legacy OCAPI or server-side controllers.
  • Architecture continuity: The new PWA Kit frontend needed access to the same business logic and data flows that powered the existing storefront. These connections DEMAND needed flexibility to allow for future upgrades to the backend SFCC pipelines without requiring future frontend updates.
  • Phased launch: Aritzia wanted to gradually role out the headless PWA Kit frontend to customers requiring the backend to support both frontends simultaneously. DEMAND needed to expose their backend to the PWA Kit frontend while maintaining the existing endpoints to run legacy Aritzia site.

Aritzia required an approach that preserved the value of their mature global SFCC implementation while unlocking the performance and agility benefits of a headless PWA experience.

"This was a highly complex environment with years of business-critical logic embedded across Aritzia’s SFCC implementation. The challenge wasn’t just enabling a new frontend, it was doing so without disrupting the systems supporting their global operations. Our focus was on creating an architecture that preserved that foundation while enabling a modern, headless experience to scale alongside the business."

Chris Bergemann, CEO, DEMAND

DEMAND created a pattern that allowed Aritzia’s new PWA Kit frontend to operate on top of its existing SFCC implementation. Aritzia had years of business logic embedded in pipelines so our team built an internal suite of SFCC scripts, hooks, and translation utilities that acted as connective tissue between the legacy business logic and the new SCAPI headless architecture.

The final architecture consisted of three main layers working cohesively inside the Salesforce Commerce Cloud environment:

1. PWA KIT FRONTEND: A React-based headless storefront responsible for rendering the customer experience, handling routing, and consuming SCAPI-style responses.

2. SFCC TRANSLATION LAYER: DEMAND built a set of scripts and hook implementations that bridged the gap between SCAPI and legacy pipeline-driven logic within the existing SFCC implementation. This layer:

  • Intercepts and handles SCAPI API calls originating from PWA Kit
  • Translates those calls into the equivalent pipeline invocations
  • Processes pipeline outputs and reshaped them into SCAPI-compatible response formats
  • Preserved the behavior of complex, highly customized international business logic
  • Allowed a consistent contract for the frontend without exposing pipeline details

3. EXISTING PIPELINES: All established logic: pricing rules, inventory handling, promotions, cart behavior, checkout, international rules, and custom integrations ran unchanged inside Aritzia’s existing pipelines. These pipelines delivered the business outcomes required for the storefront, while the translation layer normalized those results for PWA Kit.

DATA FLOW

PWA Kit ↔ SCAPI API ↔ SFCC Hook Layer ↔ Pipeline Execution

This approach provided:

  • Transparent reuse of existing pipeline-based business logic
  • SCAPI API connections without duplicating or rewriting legacy logic
  • A predictable and stable interface for the PWA Kit frontend
  • Isolation of frontend development from underlying architecture complexities

ENHANCED USER EXPERIENCE

The transition to PWA Kit delivered noticeable improvements to the customer experience across all regions. While the backend logic remained unchanged, the new frontend architecture provided a faster, more responsive interface that better supported Aritzia’s design standards and global customer expectations.

Key enhancements included:

  • Reduced load times and noticeably increased speed due to client-side rendering and optimized asset delivery.
  • Smooth, app-like browsing behavior with instant transitions between product, category, and content pages.
  • Stronger mobile performance, addressing the needs of Aritzia’s varied customer base.
  • More reliable session continuity across international storefronts through improved orchestration of authentication, cart, and account flows.
  • Greater UI consistency and flexibility, allowing Aritzia’s design and UX teams to iterate more freely without backend constraints.

The result was a modern shopping experience that supported Aritzia’s brand expectations while providing the performance foundation required for future digital initiatives.

INCREMENTAL MODERNIZATION

The translation layer was intentionally structured to support Aritzia’s long-term modernization path:

  • Pipelines can be replaced or refactored individually without affecting the PWA frontend
  • New SCAPI-native implementations can be introduced side-by-side with existing logic
  • A clear upgrade path exists for eventually retiring legacy pipelines so Aritzia can modernize backend components at a controlled pace post-launch

The architecture offered immediate compatibility with PWA Kit while enabling Aritzia to progressively adopt SCAPI and reduce reliance on pipelines over time.

"This engagement required close alignment between technical execution and business objectives. We were able to align our technical solutions with their strategic vision and deliver impactful results that helped elevate their digital commerce capabilities while supporting a strong, ongoing working relationship."

CHRIS BERGEMANN, CEO AT DEMANDPDX

ENGINEERING BENEFITS

Beyond UX gains, the architectural shift delivered strategic advantages for the engineering organization by reducing coupling, enabling parallel development, and laying the groundwork for long-term modernization.

Key engineering outcomes:

  • Decoupled frontend and backend development enabling teams to move independently and ship updates faster
  • Clear, standardized API connections through SCAPI responses, simplifying frontend integration and reducing discrepancies across regions
  • Reduced duplication of business logic by continuing to execute pipelines as the single source of authority
  • Incremental modernization strategy allowing teams to rewrite or replace pipelines one at a time without destabilizing the live site
  • Improved debugging and observability because the SFCC translation layer made it easier to trace data flow between pipelines and the PWA
  • Better long-term maintainability as the headless architecture aligned Aritzia with Salesforce’s future direction around SCAPI and modern storefronts
  • Support for additional platforms allowed Aritzia to build and launch an app experience based on the same backend SCAPI APIs that DEMAND built

This approach allowed Aritzia to modernize efficiently while preserving the operational reliability of its established SFCC implementation.

RESULTS

The migration to PWA Kit, powered by the SCAPI translation layer, achieved several measurable and strategic outcomes:

  • Faster site performance, especially on mobile and during navigation-heavy sessions.
  • Flexible frontend foundations, enabling quicker rollout of UX updates and new customer-facing features.
  • Consistent global behavior, with the translation layer ensuring that international business rules continued to function seamlessly.
  • Reduced launch risk, since the project reused existing pipelines instead of rewriting critical business logic.
  • Readiness for Salesforce’s future roadmap, positioning Aritzia to adopt SCAPI-native functionality over time and launch on new platforms such as their recently released smartphone app.

The project delivered a stable, performant headless storefront while giving Aritzia a long-term modernization path aligned with its global growth strategy.

    “The technical solution delivered in this engagement was the result of close collaboration and a shared commitment to excellence. By aligning our architecture with their business goals, we built a scalable, resilient system that not only met their performance needs but also provided a foundation for future innovation.”

    SCOT JOHNSTON, CIO AT DEMANDPDX

    CONCLUSION

    The transition to PWA Kit required a careful balance between modernizing the customer experience and preserving the complex business logic that supported its global operations. DEMAND designed a tailored SFCC architecture that translated SCAPI calls into existing pipeline executions and returned SCAPI-compatible responses, enabling the new PWA Kit frontend to operate seamlessly from day one.

    By retaining pipelines at launch and enabling incremental modernization post–go-live, this approach established a future-ready foundation without sacrificing stability, performance, or business requirements. The result is a high-performing, headless SFCC storefront built for long-term scalability and evolution.

    Client referenced for illustrative purposes. Details reflect implementation approach and may be generalized

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