/// CASE STUDY 06

Stitching Together the Perfect Solution

A hybrid e-commerce architecture that gave a yarn boutique complete creative freedom while preserving their familiar WordPress backend.

Client

The Yarn Tree

Industry

E-commerce / Retail

Location

Johannesburg

Service

Headless Commerce

Zero

Retraining Required

100%

Creative Freedom

Instant

Inventory Sync

Seamless

Backend Preservation

/// THE CHALLENGE

The E-commerce Tangle

Online retail is ruthless. Your customers expect boutique experiences with enterprise reliability. For niche retailers, the challenge is double-edged: stand out in a sea of sameness while keeping operations simple enough to actually run your business.

The Yarn Tree, a beloved Johannesburg yarn boutique, curated hand-selected fibres for South Africa's most passionate crafters. Their expertise? Unmatched. Their product knowledge? Deep. Their WordPress website? Holding them hostage.

Elementor templates couldn't capture the artisan feel of browsing hand-dyed skeins. Stock layouts made premium products look ordinary. Every customisation attempt meant hours wrestling with page builders that were never designed for true creative freedom.

"WordPress templates forced a square brand into round holes. The client knew their backend — WooCommerce inventory, orders, customer data — but the frontend couldn't reflect their craft."

/// THE SOLUTION

A Bridge, Not a Migration

What if you didn't have to choose between familiar operations and a custom experience?

We engineered a hybrid architecture: a bespoke frontend application built on Replit, powered invisibly by the same WooCommerce backend the client already knew. API calls stitch the two together seamlessly — products, inventory, cart, checkout — all flowing between systems without the client touching a single new interface.

The Admin Site

admin.theyarntreesa.co.za

The familiar WordPress dashboard, untouched. Same product management. Same order processing. Business as usual.

The Customer Site

theyarntreesa.co.za

A completely custom experience built from the ground up. Product pages that breathe. A checkout that flows.

"Zero retraining. Zero operational disruption. Complete creative freedom."

/// THE ARCHITECTURE

How It All Connects

Customer

Visits the custom storefront

Frontend

Modern Replit application

API Layer

WooCommerce REST API

Backend

Familiar WordPress admin

For the Customer: A fast, custom-designed storefront that feels crafted, not templated.

For the Client: The same WordPress login. The same product management. The same order processing.

Under the Hood: WooCommerce REST API endpoints feeding real-time data to a modern frontend. Inventory syncs instantly. Orders flow back to WordPress automatically. Klaviyo integration preserved for email marketing flows.

/// THE RESULT

Sticking the Landing

We didn't just swap templates — we rebuilt the customer-facing experience while preserving everything that worked behind the scenes.

The result? A boutique that finally looks like a boutique. An admin experience that requires no learning curve. And a technical foundation that can evolve without starting from scratch.

KEY INSIGHT

Sometimes the best solution isn't a migration — it's a bridge. By decoupling frontend and backend, we gave The Yarn Tree both worlds: the artisan aesthetic their brand deserves, powered by the systems they already trust.

Visit The Yarn Tree

Previous Case Climbing to New Heights Back to All Case Studies