KARL LAGERFELD runs its global ecommerce operation from a single team in Amsterdam, serving customers in 35 markets and eight languages. In January 2025, the fashion brand started moving off Salesforce Commerce Cloud. It went live on Shopify in mid-July.
Working with implementation partner Domaine, KARL LAGERFELD consolidated a split checkout model into one store, moved payments onto Shopify Payments and Shop Pay, and gave its digital team the ability to launch new markets, pull its own analytics, and test new features without routing every request to an outside developer.
With Shopify, KARL LAGERFELD saw results fast:
- 6.5 months from kickoff to launch, January to mid-July 2025
- 35 markets and eight languages on a single domain and a single store, with local pricing, language, and currency managed centrally
- 21% of payment share through Shop Pay year to date, live in every market
It's no longer a 'small brand' platform. That narrative has completely changed. Shopify can support huge volume, enterprise businesses, and luxury brands.
The challenge: high platform cost, low team autonomy
Salesforce Commerce Cloud supported KARL LAGERFELD's ecommerce for years, but it carried a high total cost of ownership. Maintenance and technical overhead consumed budget the team wanted to spend on growth, experimentation, and customer experience.
"The business case was predominantly targeted on reducing total cost of ownership. That was the main objective," said James Pollak, director of ecommerce operations at KARL LAGERFELD.
Cost was not the only pressure. Routine work depended on people outside the business. Small merchandising changes and everyday troubleshooting went to third-party development teams, which slowed a team already managing dozens of markets.
"Internally, Shopify has given us more autonomy and more freedom, with fewer things going to third-party development teams, even for small queries. That was part of what we expected, and it has come to fruition," James said.
A Salesforce renewal gave the team a natural decision point. KARL LAGERFELD built the case in late 2024, secured approval, selected Domaine as its implementation partner in December, and kicked off in January 2025.
The solution: one store, 35 markets, simpler payments
KARL LAGERFELD did not want a like-for-like rebuild. Working with Domaine, the brand used the migration to rethink how its storefront and its global operation worked.
The team rebuilt product pages with clearer layouts, visual size and colour selectors, responsive carousels, and better image zoom. It restructured navigation that had grown unwieldy, and rebuilt product listing pages with stronger filtering and cleaner product cards. Every change served usability and performance while holding the brand's fashion-forward identity intact.
The bigger structural change was international. KARL LAGERFELD had been running a split model: some markets checked out through Global-e, others through Salesforce Commerce Cloud directly, with fulfilment handled in-house or by a third-party logistics provider. The brand collapsed that into a single domain and a single store, using Shopify Markets to run local pricing, language, and currency for all 35 markets from Amsterdam. No regional teams. No duplicated storefronts.
The payoff showed up in the Middle East. KARL LAGERFELD launched Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, enabling the markets, pushing product data, and testing content in weeks rather than months.
Launching Saudi Arabia and the UAE was much smoother than it would have been on our previous setup. We were done in a few weeks, so we were able to see immediate value during Peak.
Payments simplified at the same time. KARL LAGERFELD moved off Adyen and onto Shopify Payments, retiring a setup that required cartridge upgrades every time a payment integration changed. Shop Pay now carries 21% of the brand's payment share year to date. The team also enabled local payment methods where eligibility allows, though availability still depends on business entity location in some regions.
"We don't have to think about payment cartridge upgrades anymore. With Shop Pay, customers are recognised and pulled into a much more seamless checkout experience," James said.
The result: a leaner team running global commerce
KARL LAGERFELD now handles work that used to leave the building. The team pulls its own analytics in-platform instead of solely tagging everything through Google Analytics, troubleshoots without opening a ticket, and uses Sidekick for the questions that once went to outside support.
"You are the master of your own destiny for a lot of things. With Sidekick, you have an assistant you can bounce things off, from analytics to operational flows. It's been a real shift for all those questions that used to go straight to third-party development and support teams," James said.
That autonomy extends to what the brand ships. Instead of scoping custom development, the team installs and tests apps from the Shopify ecosystem, trialling capabilities like virtual try-on in days.
The brand also worked with Domaine to rebuild its Klaviyo lifecycle programme, reworking welcome, abandoned cart, and back-in-stock flows, and shifting CRM towards editorial and community content rather than promotion alone.
KARL LAGERFELD replatformed to cut cost. It ended up with a commerce operation a small team can run and extend on its own.
There's only one platform I would use if I was building my own brand. I truly believe in the product and I believe in the platform.