How a premium baby gear brand balanced cost, flexibility, and scale

UPPAbaby is a premium baby gear brand with global ambitions, known for innovative strollers, car seats, and accessories. Their growing international presence required a modern ecommerce foundation that could scale quickly, handle multiple markets, and empower their internal teams.

The Challenge: Outgrowing WooCommerce

Before migrating, UPPAbaby ran its ecommerce operations on a WooCommerce + WordPress setup. While workable in the early stages, as the company looked to scale, they faced limitations:

• Excessive workarounds required to collect and analyze ecommerce data

• Lack of scalability for multi-market operations

• Heavy customization needs just to maintain basic functionality

• Limited flexibility in choosing payment processors

“WooCommerce was never going to take us where we wanted to go. It required too much jerry-rigging, and we needed something built for international growth.” - Neil Gole, UPPAbaby

Shopware as a trusted partner for growth

In the search for a new system capable of handling their growth, UPPAbaby compared a few ecommerce players to find the right solution. Comparing Salesforce Commerce Cloud, commercetools, Shopify and Shopware, there were three key factors that highlighted Shopware as the best choice for UPPAbaby's needs:

1. Flexibility & Control: Freedom to choose payment processors, integrations, and SI partners

2. Partnership Model: Shopware invested directly in UPPAbaby’s success, enhancing platform features at no extra cost

3. Cost-effectiveness: Enterprise-level capability without enterprise-level price tags

For the integration, UPPAbaby partnered with NULogic as their trusted partner. Meanwhile, Shopware's PHP-based architecture, meant UPPAbaby’s in-house developers adapted quickly without extensive retraining.

“Shopware felt like a partner who would grow with us. They invested up front in enhancements we needed, and supported us all the way from kickoff to post-launch.” - Sarah Samuelson, Sr. Digital Product Manager, UPPAbaby

Key Integrations: BlueSnap for Flexibility, Upsun for Scale

Solution25 built a BlueSnap extension for UPPAbaby as its selected global payment processor, citing favorable B2B exchange rates and cost-effective terms. Additionally, Upsun (formerly platform.sh) provided a secure and flexible hosting solution.

“BlueSnap gave us flexibility and better rates, which will help as we unify payments across our B2B and B2C models.” - Neil Gole

This choice underscored UPPAbaby’s desire for freedom from platform-mandated processors, something they noted couldn’t be achieved when considering Shopify.

The Results: New Revenue, Better Processes, and Stronger Teams

• 29 localized websites consolidated into 7 global sales channels

• One-step global launch, avoiding the drawn-out market-by-market approach

• Internal team empowered to manage and customize with minimal retraining

• Flexible payments with BlueSnap, delivering B2B benefits

• Improved data collection & analysis for global operations

Even amidst external challenges such as tariff impacts, UPPAbaby maintained stable demand forecasts, demonstrating their resilience and long-term growth potential with Shopware.

“The migration happened at a tough time with tariffs affecting demand, but Shopware gave us the platform stability to weather that storm.” - Neil Gole

When asked about what they liked most about the process with Shopware, Sarah highlights Shopware's people and support in creating a collaborative partnership:

“Most platforms stop caring once the contract is signed. With Shopware, the same team that sold us the platform stayed with us all the way through. That made a huge difference.” - Sarah Samuelson

Looking towards the future

Now that the team is successfully live with Shopware, they're already looking at future improvements to support their growth plans. Some of these include:

• Further optimizing the decoupled frontend for speed and mobile experience

• Expanding the BlueSnap integration across unified B2B and B2C models

• Continuing the roll out to new international markets

“Shopware is a unicorn. Flexible enough to meet you where you are, scalable enough to grow with you. For brands caught between the limitations of Shopify and the cost of Salesforce, it’s a perfect fit.” - Neil Gole

Learn more about the partners who support the UPPAbaby store: www.solution25.com www.bluesnap.com www.upsun.com