Custom Commerce Development
When no platform fits, we build the backend ourselves.
Custom storefronts, OMS rewrites, and legacy modernization for retailers whose catalog, checkout, or operational model breaks every off-the-shelf platform.
Where Destm actually wins
13 years inside custom retail codebases — most agencies will not touch these.
JVM Java, Spring Boot, JSP, classic ASP, ColdFusion, PHP monoliths — we have owned, modernized, and re-platformed all of them for enterprise retailers. When the right answer is not Shopify, it is usually us.
13
Years on custom retail codebases
60 → 90
PageSpeed on a gifting retailer's JSP→React rewrite
8+ yrs
Single-client run on one custom codebase, still active
JVM Java + Spring
Fluent across the legacy retail estate
Engagement shapes
Eight ways we show up.
Custom commerce is not one thing. These are the engagement shapes that recur — pick the one closest to your situation. The first call refines which actually fits.
Three of these have pages of their own: legacy modernization, project recovery, and the migration guides.
Custom storefront builds
Greenfield commerce storefronts on Next.js, React, or your stack of choice — built when Shopify, Magento, or Salesforce Commerce Cloud won't accommodate the catalog, checkout, or pricing model you actually need.
OMS / OMS-adjacent rewrites
Order Management System rewrites for retailers who outgrew Manhattan, Aptos, or homegrown systems. Built for accurate ATP, multi-node fulfillment, and the integration footprint your enterprise actually has.
Legacy commerce modernization
JSP, ColdFusion, classic ASP, PHP 5 — we have moved real enterprise retailers off these stacks. Phased modernization, no big-bang cutover, revenue protected through the migration.
Custom checkout engineering
Bespoke checkout flows with payment, tax, fraud, loyalty, and post-purchase logic woven in. Often the path when platform checkouts cannot accommodate B2B contract pricing or complex tax jurisdictions.
Headless from scratch
Headless storefront with your own commerce backend — not built on top of someone else's platform. Best fit when you need full control of the data model, pricing engine, and merchandising surfaces.
Backend services & integrations
PIM rewrites, catalog ingestion pipelines, pricing engines, promotion engines, customer-data services. The unsexy backend that platforms paper over until they cannot.
Performance re-engineering
Codebases that hit their ceiling. PageSpeed 60 → 90, P95 page loads from 6s to under 2s. Caching, edge, CDN, query tuning, asset pipeline — the full stack.
Acquisitions & code-base inheritance
Took over a commerce codebase from an acquisition or a prior agency? We do the audit, the documentation, the stabilization, and the modernization plan — and then we run the modernization. This is our project-recovery practice in full.
The honest take
When custom fits — and when it does not.
We sell custom commerce. We also tell buyers to use Shopify Plus when Shopify Plus is right. The question is not which we prefer — it is which fits your shape.
When custom fits
Your catalog or pricing model breaks the platform
Configurable products with deep variant trees, B2B contract pricing, multi-tier discounts, or SKU counts that exceed what Magento or Shopify B2B can index efficiently.
Compliance or data residency is a hard constraint
PCI scope reduction, on-premise or sovereign-cloud deployment, financial-services-adjacent retail (gift cards, BNPL, marketplaces). Platforms are usually the wrong abstraction here.
You own a legacy codebase that still drives revenue
Replatforming to Shopify or Magento would lose the operational logic your team has tuned for a decade. We modernize the codebase you have rather than discard it.
Integration footprint is the actual product
If 80% of the engineering is in OMS, WMS, ERP, PIM, loyalty, and fulfillment integrations — the storefront platform becomes secondary. Custom backends serve this shape better.
When a platform fits
Standard catalog, standard checkout, standard merchandising
Shopify Plus or Adobe Commerce will get you there faster and cheaper. Use the platform.
Brand-led D2C, sub-$50M revenue
Shopify Plus is usually the right answer. Avoid custom rebuilds unless the math is unambiguous.
Time-to-market matters more than long-run ownership
Platforms ship faster. Custom takes 6-18 months. Pick custom only if the platform tax over the next 5 years is bigger than the build cost.
How we start
Custom builds are de-risked through phasing, not faith.
Discovery + audit
Week 0-2Read the existing code. Map the integrations. Quantify the tax: where revenue leaks, where engineers slow down. Output: a phased plan with explicit milestones.
First production slice
Week 3-8One real surface — a checkout, a catalog ingestion, a pricing API — running in production against real data. Proves the architecture. Builds organizational trust.
Phased rollout
Month 3 →Each phase ships behind a flag, with rollback. Old and new run in parallel until the new is provably better. No big-bang cutover, no revenue hostage moments.
AI-assisted QA included.
Tests aren't a separate line item — they're how engineers ship covered code. Lower QA budget, faster feedback, better coverage than traditional QA cycles.
Auto-generated E2E
Playwright + LLM scaffold tests from product flows.
Self-healing selectors
Tests don't break when copy or DOM shifts.
Production replay
Real traffic patterns become regression suites.
PR-level impact
Only the relevant tests run on each diff.
How an engagement starts
Three steps to a partnership
Intake call
30 minutes. We listen, you talk. No deck.
Diagnostic
We audit the surface, name the bottleneck, propose a path.
Kickoff
Senior engineer in your standup by week two.