Sporting Goods
B2C
Click and Brick
Catalyst Shop Rides the Wave to Ecommerce Success with a Strategic BigCommerce Re-platform and Redesign
Spanning a history of over half a century, Catalyst has been a standard in the surfing industry, offering surf products, swimming apparel, and other accessories for aquatic activities. They have been in the business since the 1970s and underwent a major rebranding in 2005.
Spanning a history of over half a century, Catalyst has been a standard in the surfing industry, offering surf products, swimming apparel, and other accessories for aquatic activities. They have been in the business since the 1970s and underwent a major rebranding in 2005.
Scope Summary
The Effort
Project Management
FREE
UX/UI Design
50 hrs
Development
160 hrs
Data
30 hrs
CRO
10 hrs
Total
250 hrs
Service Model
Project
i
We offer three flexible service models: On Call, Project, Monthly. See our pricing page for details.
Engagement Range
$20k – $25k
i
This range is provided only as a reference to help estimate similar engagements. Actual costs vary based on project scope, complexity, custom functionality, and client direction.
Theme: Alaska Ap Base 1
Team Members
Project Manager
UX/UI Designer
Developer
Data Admin
CRO Expert
Tech Stack
Adobe XD
User Way
The Challenge
Catalyst was still operating on an aging Magento build that had become slow, fragile, and expensive to maintain. Their previous agency charged high hourly rates and struggled to deliver timely updates, leaving the team hesitant to request improvements and unable to keep pace with customer expectations. The platform was holding them back, and the agency relationship provided little confidence that things would improve.
On top of this, Catalyst needed a platform strong enough to support a click-and-brick model. Surfboards, accessories, and apparel were stocked across multiple physical locations, each with its own inventory rules. Shipping was equally complex: oversized surfboards required dimensional logic, and customers in regions like Puerto Rico and Hawaii needed accurate regional shipping rates. Their new platform had to integrate deeply with ShipperHQ, preserve all SEO value from Magento, migrate thousands of products, and deliver a faster, cleaner, mobile-optimized shopping experience.
They weren’t looking for a basic migration. They needed a complete ecommerce overhaul with modern performance, accurate shipping, and a dependable partner to execute it.
Project Goals
Seamlessly migrate from Magento to BigCommerce.
Preserve all SEO and URLs.
Support complex product and inventory setups.
Maintain existing customizations during the platform upgrade.
Implement mobile optimization.
Improve the checkout experience.
Provide robust shipping solutions for regions such as Puerto Rico and Hawaii.
Implement advanced product recommendation and filtering tools.
Introduce a "Favorites" button to allow saving products and driving re-engagement.
Enhance order and customer management capabilities.
Integrate multi-channel sales and social media feeds.
Ensure ADA compliance.
Fully functional analytics, email marketing, and SEO tools.
Optimize landing pages.
Provide a seamless user experience.
Maintain high site performance and security.
Our Approach
We began with a structured Magento-to-BigCommerce migration, transferring every URL, SEO field, and product dataset without losing domain authority. Using Cart2Cart and custom data processing, we brought over their surfboard categories, multi-store inventory, and existing customizations.
The storefront was rebuilt on a custom BigCommerce theme, focusing on clarity, speed, and mobile-first design. Pages like the homepage, landing pages, and brand collections were refreshed with cleaner hierarchy and faster load times.
Because shipping was a critical pain point, we treated ShipperHQ as a core system. We configured dimensional shipping rules for surfboards, regional logic for Hawaii and Puerto Rico, weight-based restrictions, and fallback rules for multi-location fulfillment. This eliminated many of the errors that their previous agency never resolved.
To finish, we added enhanced filtering via Searchanise, integrated Klaviyo, validated ADA compliance, configured analytics, and tested every user pathway on desktop, mobile, and across all ShipperHQ scenarios.
Outcome
Catalyst finally achieved what their previous agency could not deliver, a stable, modern, fast BigCommerce store built around their real operational needs. The new implementation resolved long-standing issues with multi-location inventory, oversized shipping, and checkout usability. ShipperHQ now provides accurate, dependable rates, reducing customer service tickets and abandoned carts. The redesigned storefront offers a clean, mobile-optimized experience that has already produced measurable conversion lifts.
Most importantly, Catalyst now has a platform and partner they trust and one that delivers work efficiently and transparently, without the inflated costs or slow turnaround times they previously struggled with.
Growth Highlights
Simplified site management and updates
New channels for business growth
Better shopping experience
Increased conversion rates
More efficient online store
Conversion Rate
Improved by:
12 %
AOV
Improved by:
14.66 %
New Customers Rate
Improved by:
23.22 %
Date Period: Jan 01- Dec 17, 2025 VS Jan 01- Dec 17, 2024
We worked with traditional agencies before but it was hard to get ROI at $200 plus an hour and it left us scared to optimize and give our e-commerce platform the attention it needed to really grow. Always Open Commerce always changed this. They now help us manage as well as built us a platform that has helped our business grow exponentially over the past few years. Using AOC we are able to see exactly what we are paying for with their unique but client focused payment structure. Their communication, pricing, and completion time on tasks is excellent and the best we have seen in the business. We highly recommend Always Open Commerce for any of your website development and management needs.
- Camden Peterson, E-Commerce Manager, Catalyst Shop
Estimates and Timesheet
Custom Design
Theme Development
Conversion Rate Optimization