When 17-year-old Salvatore Capezio opened a small shoe repair shop in New York in 1887, he couldn’t have guessed that Capezio would become one of the most iconic names in the performance world. Since then, the brand’s commitment to craftsmanship, fit, and artistic expression has put Capezio’s name in lights for dancers around the world, who trust the brand above all others for ballet slippers, pointe shoes, tap shoes, apparel, and accessories that reach the same high standards of performance that the artists deliver onstage. But as ecommerce increasingly took center stage among global consumers’ preferred modes of shopping, the brand found their digital infrastructure had fallen several steps behind.
Running three distinct ecommerce stores for the US, UK, and EU on the Magento platform, Capezio faced increasing delays and technical obstacles to delivering the fast, intuitive, global shopping experience they envisioned—and that modern customers expected. They needed a scalable, flexible foundation that would integrate seamlessly with regional ERP and POS requirements and support omnichannel growth without a lot of maintenance cost. To handle moving three stores without costly downtime, they needed a partner with the technical knowledge and creative insights to help bring their vision online. Because of their history of successfully setting up brands to grow and diversify on Shopify, Capezio knew Absolute Web was the perfect partner to help them stick the landing on this complex move.
Since partnering with Absolute Web and transitioning to Shopify, Capezio has achieved remarkable results:
- A 144% increase in conversion rate
- An 81% increase in average engagement time
- A 25% improvement in bounce rate
The Challenge: Operating in Multiple Regions Under a Burden of Technical Debt
Capezio’s three regional Magento stores had evolved separately over the years, each running its own set of customizations, ERP workflows, and maintenance routines—and each requiring separate technical oversight. This fragmentation accelerated their rising operating costs while slowing and hindering their delivery of updates. Frequent patches and developer labor were required just to keep the sites stable, leaving limited capacity for improving the customer experience or launching new features.
The slow development cycles were especially taxing. Even basic updates—like adding a new line of pointe shoes or changing the price of leotards—required full site reindexing and lengthy deployment processes. The fragmentation meant that rather than launching a new promotion across all three sites simultaneously, three separate teams implemented the changes, each on their own timeline—a recipe for disjointed customer experiences. This meant marketing campaigns launched late, promotions couldn’t be updated quickly, and internal teams were bogged down with technical labor.
And the challenges weren’t limited to online business: since Magento did not integrate natively with the POS system in their brick-and-mortar locations, Capezio lacked the unified inventory that would allow store associates to help customers with accurate inventory information in-store, and additional labor was required for processing returns and exchanges. Integration with Capezio’s ERP platform was fragile and piled on more technical debt for the custom development and constant monitoring required to keep vital order data in sync. Inevitable data mismatches led to frustrated employees and customers.
This accumulation of issues directly impacted key business functions, leading to slower launches, increased overhead, and inconsistent global experiences. As Capezio explained:
On Magento, even simple updates like adding products or adjusting prices required a full site reindex, which took considerable time. On Shopify, those changes are applied immediately, and the same goes for category updates.
In order to perform at the speed of modern commerce, Capezio needed a platform that would pull them out from under the burden of massive technical debt, streamline their workflows, and give their business the ability to perform as dynamically as their products and customers, around the globe and across all channels. Shopify offered a scalable, lower-maintenance foundation built for the storied brand’s next phase of growth.
The Solution: A Nimble Shopify Architecture Built for Global High-Performance
Absolute Web set about building a powerful new center of retail operations for Capezio within the sturdy but flexible framework of Shopify’s unified commerce ecosystem, nimble enough to fulfill multi-regional requirements while reliably integrated with the brand’s ERP, POS, and other retail systems.
As the Absolute team shared:
Because Capezio operates across multiple regions and systems, our focus was on creating a clean, scalable Shopify architecture. We approached the migration in phases—theme design, development, data migration, integrations, and performance optimization—to ensure each store launched stable, fast, and fully aligned with regional ERP and POS requirements.
Absolute Web designed a modern, performance-optimized theme easily adaptable across US, EU, and UK stores to support localized content, currencies, pricing, and fulfillment logic. The new design delivered a consistent brand experience across regions without requiring duplicated efforts from the Capezio team.
Next, they executed a full data migration covering products, customers, orders, discounts, and gift cards, and rebuilt ERP integrations around clean, manageable interfaces. Since Shopify is built with these integrations in mind, there was no more need for the fragile custom code that had slowed their progress on their previous platform, and required costly development time just to keep things running.
Implementing Shopify POS for the US retail operation unified inventory across all channels, facilitating omnichannel workflows and enabling store associates to help customers with confidence in the accuracy of their information.
On Shopify, Capezio gained game-changing new capabilities:
- A high-performance checkout built for the ways modern customers prefer to pay, like Shop Pay, Apple Pay, and Google Pay
- Flexible integrations with LoyaltyLion, Klevu, Stamped.io, Klaviyo, and Feedonomics
- Optimized Google Core Web Vitals performance—critical for the customer experience and SEO—thanks to Absolute Web’s refined theme architecture and Shopify’s powerful infrastructure
- Faster innovation through experimentation using tools like Shoplift for conversion rate optimization (CRO) testing
- Easier deployments and content updates, empowering internal teams to focus on innovation and expansion without relying on external developers and accruing technical debt
Capezio now operates from a stable, scalable Shopify ecosystem where their stores are easier to maintain and faster to enhance, setting the stage for a future performance of unlimited possibilities.
The Results: A Fast, Dynamic Commerce Operation Primed for Growth
After Absolute Web completed Capezio’s migration to Shopify—with 100% uptime during the project period—the new stores showed immediate improvements in performance, stability, and operational efficiency. Maintenance costs shrank significantly with Shopify handling hosting, PCI compliance, and security, along with a stable commerce engine that never required emergency patches or troubleshooting from a development team.
Capezio’s stores can now perform at the same level as their products, with key processes accelerated across the board: deployments are 90% faster, QA cycles have improved by 60%, and new features now roll out 50% faster than before the move. All regions now hit their targets for Core Web Vitals, with dramatically improved load times and a more stable online shopping experience contributing to strong conversion gains.
Here’s how Capezio describes the difference in daily operations and business impact:
We’ve seen steady business growth, and Shopify has certainly helped. The platform feels much more streamlined than Magento, and apps such as Happy Returns and Stamped operate far more smoothly and integrate without friction.
The brand also expressed clear appreciation for the partnership that made this modernization possible, built on years of experience, deep technical understanding, proactive communication, and consistent on-time delivery. They particularly value Absolute Web’s ability to manage multi-region complexity, solve long-standing integration challenges, and support stable launches without disruption.
Looking ahead, Capezio plans to continue making bold moves in partnership with Absolute Web, building on their strong foundation with:
- Expanded omnichannel initiatives through Shopify POS
- Enhanced loyalty and retention programs
- New product categories and potential additional regional storefronts
- Upgraded ERP automation
- Advanced CRO and personalization programs
- A B2B/professional dancer portal
- Continued mobile UX and conversion optimization
With a stable, flexible Shopify architecture built for innovation and growth and a trusted partner helping them choreograph their next big moves, Capezio is primed for long-term global growth while continuing to deliver a world-class digital experience for dancers and performers everywhere.
