Shopify Plus consulting for a strategic commerce decision
Helping Cosnova make a confident
Shopify Plus decision
Helping Cosnova make a confident
Overview
Cosnova is an internationally known cosmetics company behind brands such as essence and CATRICE. The company already had an existing direct-to-consumer commerce setup in place, but wanted to evaluate whether a different platform approach could reduce complexity, lower operational costs and create a more flexible foundation for the future.
Especial supported Cosnova during this evaluation phase as a senior Shopify Plus consulting partner. Our work focused on feasibility, technical validation, architecture consulting and decision support. We helped the team understand which parts of a future setup could be handled natively by Shopify Plus, where additional development or integrations might be needed and which architectural decisions would have to be made early.
Client
cosnova GmbH
Services
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Shopify Plus Consulting & Platform Evaluation
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Feasibility Analysis
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Architecture Consulting
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Tech Q&A
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Migration Assessment
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Decision Support
Project duration
7 Weeks
The team
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1 Senior Shopify Consultant
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1 Solution Architect
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1 Technical Project Lead
Challenges & goals
Cosnova was considering whether Shopify Plus could become the right platform for its future direct-to-consumer commerce setup. The existing setup had become complex and costly to operate, so the team wanted to understand whether a Shopify Plus approach could simplify operations and provide a more cost-efficient alternative.
The key question was not simply if Shopify Plus could work, but how. Cosnova needed to know exactly how Shopify Plus would fit into their organization, technical landscape, and strategic goals.
Cosnova needed a partner who could evaluate the platform honestly, answer detailed stakeholder questions, and make the trade-offs visible before major implementation decisions were made.
Our approach
Our role was to help Cosnova understand what a Shopify Plus migration would involve before committing budget, timeline and internal resources. This included reviewing requirements, answering structured question catalogs, discussing edge cases and supporting architecture decisions around the potential future setup.
Together with the Cosnova teams, we looked at business requirements, expected traffic and transaction volumes, integration needs, functional requirements, security topics and compliance considerations.
Instead of pushing toward a launch at all costs, we focused on clear decision-making. Where Shopify Plus was a good fit, we explained why. Where custom logic, integrations or additional architectural planning would be needed, we made that visible early.
This gave Cosnova a more realistic view of the effort, opportunities and constraints of a possible Shopify
Plus migration.
01 Evaluate
Assess whether Shopify Plus could support Cosnova’s DTC commerce requirements.
02 Calculate
Review whether a different platform setup could reduce complexity and long-term operating costs.
03 Validate
Clarify whether a migration could be planned without major disruption to the business.
04 Prepare
Create a structured view of what a potential migration would entail.
Roadmap - From platform questions to strategic decisions
Cosnova’s project started with an open strategic question: could Shopify Plus become a simpler, more cost-efficient foundation for the company’s future DTC commerce setup?
To answer that properly, we worked through the evaluation step by step. We reviewed the existing setup, assessed feasibility, answered technical and organizational questions and helped clarify the architecture that would be required for a potential Shopify Plus migration.
01
Context & Platform Review
02
Requirement Analysis
03
Shopify Plus Evaluation & Platform Comparison
04
Migration Assessment
Feasibility Analysis: Understanding what Shopify Plus could really support
A platform migration should never start with assumptions. Before Cosnova could make a decision, the team needed to understand what Shopify Plus would support out of the box, where the platform would need to be extended and which requirements could create additional complexity.
We helped Cosnova evaluate the planned DTC setup from a Shopify Plus perspective. This included looking at commerce workflows, platform capabilities, technical constraints, integration needs and potential areas for custom development.
The goal was not to make Shopify Plus look like the answer to every question. The goal was to create a realistic picture of what a move to Shopify Plus would mean - technically, operationally and commercially.
Technical Q&A: Clear answers for complex stakeholder questions
Large commerce decisions involve many stakeholders. Product, IT, operations, commerce and leadership teams all need different answers before they can move forward with confidence.
Cosnova collected detailed questions around the potential Shopify Plus migration. Especial supported the team by working through these question catalogs and providing clear, practical answers.
This helped reduce uncertainty, align expectations and make the implications of a possible migration easier to understand across teams.
Architecture Consulting: Designing the right foundation before committing
Architecture decisions made early in a commerce project can shape the platform for years. That is why Cosnova needed clarity before moving into implementation.
We supported the team in evaluating architectural options for a potential Shopify Plus setup. This included questions around platform boundaries, custom logic, integrations, data flows and maintainability.
Our consulting helped Cosnova understand which decisions would be critical for a future migration and which areas would need deeper planning before implementation.
Cost Assessment: Understanding implementation cost and total cost of ownership
A platform decision is never just about license fees. For Cosnova, it was important to understand the full commercial impact of a potential Shopify Plus migration — from the one-time cost of implementation to the long-term total cost of ownership.
We helped the team break down the expected investment across key areas: migration effort, technical setup, integrations, data transfer, custom development, testing, training and ongoing operations. This made it easier to compare the existing setup with a potential Shopify Plus approach in a realistic way, not only from a platform-cost perspective but also in terms of internal effort, maintenance and future scalability.
Migration Assessment: Planning a potential migration realistically
Based on the evaluation, we helped Cosnova understand what a possible migration path could look like. This included project phases, responsibilities, data migration, integration planning, testing, training and support for the initial phase.
The assessment looked at how product data, customer information and order history could be transferred safely, how existing systems would need to connect and how operational risks could be reduced during a potential transition.
While Cosnova ultimately chose to pause the migration, the project was a vital strategic success. The planning armed the team with a clear understanding of the real-world effort, architecture dependencies and organizational requirements needed for any future platform evolution.
Outcome & outlook -
Technical clarity for a strategic commerce decision
Our assessment confirmed that Shopify Plus would have been a viable and valuable replacement for Cosnova’s existing DTC commerce setup. It could have supported the core requirements while simplifying operations, reducing platform complexity and lowering costs.
A migration would also have required Cosnova to rethink some existing processes and streamline complex features of the previous setup. In many cases, this would have been a benefit rather than a limitation: several of those complexities created limited business value, at the expense of increased costs and operational strain.
From a platform perspective, Shopify Plus could have made the DTC channel leaner and more manageable. It would likely have helped reduce the burden of running the business and created a more cost-efficient technical foundation.
Unfortunately the migration to Shopify Plus was only one part of the broader DTC business case. Even with a simpler and cheaper platform setup, the remaining costs and challenges of operating the channel were too high. The migration would have improved the viability of DTC for Cosnova, but not enough to justify continuing the business.
Our assessment fully validated the platfrom's readiness, serving as the benchmark that allowed Cosnova to make a claer, data-driven decision to ultimately discontinue the DTC channel.
