Barkers

The
Project

Platform

Shopify Plus

Services

Platform Implementation

Subscriptions & Loyalty

Data Driven UX & UI

SEO Migration

Digital Transformation

Applications & Extensions

Systems Architecture (technology)

Two of New Zealand's most recognised fashion brands, each built on decades of heritage and a clear point of view.

Max is conscious style for women. Timeless silhouettes, ethical sourcing, and a commitment to sustainability that goes beyond the label. Barkers is refined Kiwi menswear. Craftsmanship, quality fabric, and over fifty years of cultural relevance. Different brands, shared values: premium design and retail that stands for something.

Overdose. and these brands go way back. What started with the original Adobe Commerce builds has evolved into a partnership grounded in trust, ambition, and a deep understanding of what makes each brand tick. So when it came time to migrate both brands to Shopify Plus and expand into Australia, there was no pitch required. This was the natural next step. A migration born from years of collaboration, not a cold brief.

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Integrations

The big one here was OnTempo. The ERP & POS that runs inventory, fulfilment, loyalty, gift cards, and promotions across both brands and both regions. Getting Shopify to talk to OnTempo at this depth isn't a plug-and-play exercise.

Overdose. had already built and proven the OnTempo Integration Accelerator. A purpose-built middleware layer hosted on AWS, owned entirely by Overdose. and architected to handle the full breadth of OnTempo's capabilities. Loyalty, gift cards, promotions, real-time inventory. All covered as standard.

For this project, we extended the Accelerator to accommodate the specific data patterns and business logic Barkers and Max needed, including Shopify Markets support for real-time sync across NZ and AU. The result: order flow, stock visibility, loyalty balances, gift card redemption, and promotional logic running in real time across four storefronts. Proven infrastructure, reduced risk, faster go-live, and a platform that scales into new markets without re-architecting the backend.

Klaviyo, Zendesk, and Foursixty were implemented alongside, each connected at brand level to keep customer data, messaging, and workflows distinct.

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Challenges  
+ Solutions

Challenge 01

Migrating Off a Mature Platform Without Losing Ground

After years on Adobe Commerce, both brands had deeply customised storefronts, established workflows, and teams who knew the platform inside out. The fear with any replatform is real. You're trading a system that works for one that should work better. The challenge isn't just technical, it's organisational: how do you move forward without undoing what's already been built?

SOLUTION

Overdose. approached the migration as an evolution, not a reset. Every custom workflow, integration, and business rule was mapped before a single line of code was written. Feature parity was established early so the new Shopify Plus environment matched, and in most cases exceeded, what Adobe had delivered. The brands moved forward with confidence because nothing was left behind.

Challenge 02

Multi-Brand, Multi-Region Architecture

Two brands, two countries, four storefronts. Every connected platform needed to respect the difference. What works for Barkers menswear in NZ can't be copy-pasted to Max womenswear in AU. The challenge was designing an architecture that scales across brands and borders without becoming a maintenance burden.

SOLUTION

Overdose. stood up dedicated Shopify instances for each brand with Shopify Markets configured for NZ and AU. Each instance connects to its own Klaviyo, Zendesk, and Foursixty accounts, preserving brand-level data and workflows. The result is a clean, scalable structure where each brand operates independently but shares a unified integration backbone, ready for new markets without re-architecting.

Challenge 03

ERP Integration That Goes Beyond Basic Sync

OnTempo runs inventory, fulfilment, loyalty, gift cards, and promotions across both brands. It's the operational backbone. Most ERP connectors handle product and order sync. That wasn't going to cut it here. The integration needed to cover the full breadth of what OnTempo does, in real time, across four storefronts.

SOLUTION

Overdose. extended its proven OnTempo Integration Accelerator, a purpose-built middleware layer hosted on AWS, to accommodate the specific data patterns and business logic Barkers and Max required, including Shopify Markets support. The Accelerator now handles order flow, stock visibility, loyalty balances, gift card redemption, and promotional logic across every storefront in real time. Proven infrastructure, reduced risk, faster go-live.

Challenge 04

Going Live Without Going Dark

Migrating two high-traffic retail brands simultaneously, each with distinct product catalogues, customer databases, and operational workflows, without disrupting live trading. Every retailer's nightmare: the cutover window where things can go wrong.

SOLUTION

Overdose. built a phased migration strategy that let each brand transition independently while sharing a unified project timeline. Custom data migration scripts transferred historical customer accounts, order history, and loyalty balances with full integrity. Parallel staging environments enabled rigorous UAT across both brands before a coordinated go-live. No downtime, no data loss, no drama.

Challenge 05

Loyalty Programme Migration Without Losing Members

Both brands had established loyalty programmes with active, engaged members. Accumulated points, earn rules, redemption logic, regional balances. All of it needed to land on Shopify Plus exactly as customers expected. There's no margin for error here. Lose someone's points and you lose their trust.

SOLUTION

Overdose. engineered a custom loyalty integration through the OnTempo Accelerator to synchronise point balances, earn rules, and redemption logic across both storefronts. Regional variations were baked in from the start. NZ and AU customers see and redeem rewards specific to their market. Existing member data was migrated seamlessly, loyalty history intact, customer trust maintained.

Challenge 06

Protecting Years of Organic Search Equity

Years of SEO investment built on Adobe Commerce. Thousands of indexed pages generating consistent organic traffic. A platform migration is the single biggest risk to organic visibility a retailer can take. URL structures, metadata, redirect logic, structured data. Get any of it wrong and rankings disappear overnight.

SOLUTION

Overdose. executed full URL mapping and 301 redirect implementation across thousands of product, category, and content pages. Metadata was audited and carried over. Canonical tags were configured for Shopify Markets to prevent duplicate content across regions. Structured data was implemented to maintain rich result eligibility. Post-launch monitoring caught and resolved indexation issues fast, protecting the organic equity that took years to build.

UX/UI

The standout UX challenge wasn't the migration itself. It was making loyalty feel native to Shopify Plus.

Overdose. built a dynamic points breakdown visible on both the PDP and cart, showing customers exactly what each purchase earns them. Simple transparency, big impact. It drives account creation, encourages login, and deepens the reward loop that keeps customers coming back.

Beyond that, Shopify's out-of-the-box account pages weren't going to cut it. The team customised account layouts to handle the complexity of region-aware reward displays. NZ and AU balances, redemption options, and loyalty tiers all surfaced clearly without confusion. The result is an account experience that feels considered and branded, not bolted on.