Dunham's Sports Scales Performance for Heavy ERP Imports

Modernizing Ecommerce for a Legacy Outdoor Retail Chain

Dunham’s Sports is a well-established sporting goods and outdoor retailer with more than 260 stores across the Midwest, USA. While the brand had built a strong in-store presence over decades, its previous ecommerce setup was running on a legacy Salesforce implementation that had become difficult to scale and maintain.

With a product catalog exceeding 130,000 SKUs and inventory distributed across hundreds of locations, Dunham’s needed a modern platform capable of handling high-volume ERP imports, frequent catalog updates, and accurate inventory synchronization across its entire store network.

The business also required a secure and compliant ecommerce workflow for regulated products, including firearms and ammunition. This added another layer of complexity, requiring careful merchandising logic and purchase flows aligned with local and federal regulations.

Shopware and Ziffity Build a Modern Foundation

Ziffity, Dunham’s implementation partner, recommended Shopware for its flexibility and ability to support data-intensive operations at enterprise scale. Built on Shopware 6 and deployed in a self-hosted environment on Upsun, the new platform gave Dunham’s the control needed to integrate deeply with its IBM AS400 ERP system while maintaining a lean, high-performance architecture.

Shopware’s open-source foundation also enabled the team to customize workflows without being constrained by the limitations of a closed SaaS platform. This was especially important for Dunham’s complex operational requirements, including large-scale ERP synchronization, omnichannel fulfillment options, and regulated product merchandising.

Throughout the project, Ziffity worked closely with Shopware’s technical teams, while Solution25 was brought in by Shopware to support endpoint development for key web service integrations, including Cybersource and Listrak.

Scaling Performance and Infrastructure for Heavy ERP Imports

The project began on a shared compute setup, but early performance bottlenecks emerged during ERP imports and re-indexing tasks. These operations created spikes in load that required a more scalable infrastructure approach.

Working together, the teams transitioned the platform to a dedicated compute environment, improving stability and significantly reducing delays during high-volume imports and catalog updates.

To further strengthen performance and security, the implementation included Fastly WAF rules, rate limiting, and custom VCL configurations. These measures helped protect system resources and reduce unwanted traffic, ensuring consistent site speed during peak usage periods.

The build also included a strategic implementation of OpenSearch, enabling fast and accurate product discovery across tens of thousands of SKUs and hundreds of categories in seconds.

Launching DunhamsSports.com Ahead of the Holiday Season

Over the course of a nine-month build, Dunham’s, Ziffity, Shopware, Solution25, and the infrastructure teams remained closely aligned through shared communication channels. This real-time collaboration enabled rapid issue resolution, strong visibility across stakeholders, and smooth coordination around deployments, imports, and performance tuning.

In September, Dunham’s successfully launched its modernized ecommerce platform on Shopware 6, delivering a stable foundation ahead of the holiday season.

A Major Digital Milestone for Dunham’s Sports

The online store went live on schedule and operated without disruptions. Infrastructure and platform architecture were optimized for heavy ERP imports, large-scale re-indexing, and high data volume. There was collaborative success with Dunham’s, Ziffity, Shopware and Solution25 infrastructure teams working as a unified team, ensuring clear communication and shared technical insight from start to finish.