What Enterprise Retailers Can Learn from Boden and World of Books’ Shopify Transformation

At our recent dinner with Shopify at Fortnum & Mason, senior retail leaders came together to hear directly from Boden and World of Books about their journeys transforming enterprise commerce on Shopify.

Over three courses, the discussion explored how legacy systems slow retailers down, what it really takes to migrate at scale, and how simplification can create space for innovation.

Here are the key takeaways from the evening.

1. Legacy technology remains the biggest barrier to progress

Both Boden and World of Books shared how legacy platforms had become the main factor holding their businesses back, limiting innovation, slowing change, and consuming resource.

For Boden, years of bespoke development meant every small change came with heavy integration costs. By moving to Shopify, they’ve cut delivery cycles from months to sprints and halved the resource needed to make change.

The shift to Shopify enabled teams to focus on outcomes and not maintenance.

Agility has become a measurable business capability.

2. Shopify has proven its enterprise capability

There was a clear consensus in the room: the perception of Shopify as a platform for smaller retailers is outdated.

“We’ve tested the limits, global pricing, inventory syncs, high transaction volumes and we haven’t hit a ceiling yet.” said David Magee, Product Director at World of Books

For Boden, Shopify’s infrastructure has taken the operational pressure off.

“We’ve gone from worrying about system resilience to focusing on customer experience. That’s a huge mindset shift.” said Alex Ives, Senior Director of Technology at Boden

The takeaway was clear: Shopify’s scalability and reliability are now proven at enterprise level, through day-to-day operations.

3. Migration requires conviction

Every enterprise migration reaches a point of uncertainty. Both Boden and World of Books described moments when the easier option would have been to stop, but staying the course was the right call.

World of Books ran its new and old platforms in parallel, A/B testing 50% of traffic across both. The data proved Shopify’s performance and gave the business the confidence to complete the migration.

“At some point, you just have to back the decision,” David said. “You won’t know 100% until you go live, but not moving is often the bigger risk.”

For both brands, conviction in the long-term benefit was critical to overcoming short-term challenges.

4. Simplification unlocks innovation 

The evening closed with a shared reflection: simplifying technology creates space for creativity, experimentation, and speed.

Boden spoke about extending their ecosystem to Shopify POS to support a new store in the US, creating a single view of stock and sales across channels.

World of Books shared how the flexibility Shopify has allowed them to pilot new customer experiences in days. 

Key Themes

• Agility over architecture – simplify first, scale faster

• Enterprise-ready – Shopify is now proven at global scale

• Partnership matters – success comes from alignment between teams, partners, and platform

• Simplification drives creativity – less maintenance, more experimentation

Evenings like this reinforce what we see across our enterprise clients every day: when technology stops being the bottleneck, transformation happens faster, and the impact runs far deeper than the platform itself.