Helix Commerce: headless rebuild for a 40-brand retailer
Migrated a legacy multi-brand commerce platform to a headless Next.js stack — Lighthouse 95+ across the board, conversion up 22%.
- Client
- Helix Group
- Published
- November 2025
The setup
Helix runs 40 brands across three regions on a legacy commerce monolith. Page loads were averaging 4.2s on mobile, the merch team needed 2-3 days to publish a new campaign, and the dev team had stopped opening the codebase except in emergencies.
What we built
A new headless stack: Next.js App Router on Vercel Edge for the storefront, Sanity for content, the existing commerce engine kept for cart and checkout. Brand-aware routing handles all 40 storefronts from one codebase, each with its own theme and content.
The merch experience
The biggest unlock wasn't speed — it was time-to-publish. The merch team now drags components into Sanity, previews, and ships in minutes. The old workflow involved tickets, a dev release, and a 3-day cycle.
The team that maintains the site now ships campaign pages in twenty minutes instead of three days. The dev team gets their time back.
Conversion-rate lift came from the speed: median time-to-interactive dropped from 4.2s to 1.1s, and we measured a 22% lift in checkout-completion across the rebuilt brands.
The team that maintains the site now ships campaign pages in twenty minutes instead of three days.