Unifying Five Shopify Brands Without Losing Brand Identity
Fresh and Good Food Solutions operated five independent Shopify stores under one company. While this supported individual brand growth, it created friction for customers and operational strain for the business. Customers were forced into multiple checkouts, while the team managed duplicated maintenance, performance issues, and growing technical debt. The challenge was to unify everything without disrupting brand trust or familiarity.
Problems
- Customers were required to complete multiple checkouts when buying from more than one brand.
- Maintaining five separate Shopify stores increased operational complexity and costs.
- Merging stores risked diluting well-established brand identities.
- Existing storefronts suffered from slow performance and degraded user experience.
Goals
- Consolidate all brands into a single Shopify store with a shared technical foundation.
- Preserve each brand’s unique identity and product experience.
- Enable cross-brand shopping with a single, seamless checkout.
- Significantly improve performance, speed, and usability.
Insight
This was not primarily a visual challenge, but a perception challenge. Even with a unified backend, customers needed to feel they were shopping from distinct brands. If the consolidation was noticeable, the experience would feel forced. Success depended on making the complexity invisible.
Strategy
- Use a single Shopify store as the technical backbone while separating brand perception from architecture.
- Drive brand-specific UI and layouts through structured product metadata and taxonomy.
- Implement custom Liquid logic to bypass Shopify limitations without heavy third-party apps.
- Rebuild the storefront with a performance-first, lightweight approach.
Why This Was Hard
- Unifying five established brands without flattening their identities.
- Working within Shopify’s constraints while delivering deep customization.
- Increasing functional complexity without sacrificing performance.
Execution
Brand-Distinct Experiences Within One Store
Each brand received dedicated pages, visual language, and product presentation rules. Colors, typography, layouts, and content tone were tightly controlled to ensure immediate brand recognition.
Customers retained brand familiarity while benefiting from a unified shopping experience.
Custom Liquid Architecture
Custom Liquid logic dynamically applied brand-specific styling, layouts, and business rules without relying on performance-heavy third-party apps.
Enabled deep customization, long-term flexibility, and strong performance.
Brand-Separated Cart Experience
Cart items were grouped by brand, each maintaining its own delivery logic, availability rules, and date requirements.
Checkout clarity improved, reducing confusion and abandoned carts.
Performance Overhaul
The storefront was rebuilt using a lightweight theme, optimized assets, and modern loading strategies, removing unnecessary scripts and legacy dependencies.
Load times improved significantly, reducing bounce rates and improving engagement.
Results
- Customers can shop across all brands and complete purchases in a single checkout.
- Each brand’s identity and tone were fully preserved.
- Site performance improved with faster load times and better engagement.
- Customer feedback confirmed the experience felt familiar — just faster and simpler.
“We were worried merging everything would dilute our brands — but customers didn’t even notice. It still feels like our individual brands, just faster and easier to use.”
