Headquartered in Santa Barbara, California, SLTWTR began, over a decade ago, as a graphic and web design agency before diving into the commerce space. During that time, they explored various commerce platforms, all while working with brands whose missions aligned with their core values of authenticity and creativity.
"We were developing on a number of platforms, and our clients were getting a varied amount of value from the various platforms that we were implementing for them," says Eric Panofsky, founder and CEO of SLTWTR. "We were implementing things like WordPress with WooCommerce, Magento (now Adobe Commerce), and BigCommerce, and the amount of effort that was involved was disproportionate to the value that we were able to deliver on such platforms."
That led to a pivotal decision in 2017 when SLTWTR went all-in on Shopify, dedicating their agency exclusively to the platform. "We had some experience with Shopify and found that we were able to deliver an extraordinary amount of value, not only for our clients, but also for ourselves as an agency," says Eric.
Since then, SLTWTR has built a reputation for handling complex enterprise migrations onto Shopify, particularly for lifestyle-inspired apparel brands. Despite their boutique size, they've successfully migrated major multi-brand organizations from Salesforce Commerce Cloud to Shopify, proving that agencies with a small footprint can deliver enterprise-level results when armed with the right platform and approach.
As a Shopify Premier partner, SLTWTR has experienced benefits such as:
- 90% merchant retention rate over a five-year period
- Completing enterprise multi-brand migrations in as little as 12 weeks
- Year over year growth as an agency consistently since 2017
The challenge: Migrate brands constrained by legacy platforms
SLTWTR has observed a changing tide in the enterprise commerce landscape.
"I’ve seen a large influx now of the highest end of enterprise looking to migrate to Shopify. There are so many amazing brands on Shopify now with the degree of flexibility that has manifested with the product and with the platform in the last 24 months. There's no reason to not go to Shopify and so all eyes are on it. It seems like for those who are not actively pursuing a migration, they're looking at it."
—Eric Panofsky, Founder and CEO, SLTWTR
This was precisely the case for the family of brands that includes Quiksilver, Billabong, Roxy, and RVCA. They approached SLTWTR with an urgent need to migrate from Salesforce Commerce Cloud to Shopify. "It's not uncommon for us to receive urgent requests from merchants for a migration into Shopify based on changing business needs," explains Eric.
These iconic surf and lifestyle brands were facing significant challenges with their existing platform, including that their internal rate of innovation wasn’t nimble enough to keep up with the commerce landscape. They knew migrating would include an immense scope and aggressive timeline, so they entrusted SLTWTR to make it happen.
"We're talking about a very aggressive timeline: 12 week migration of Salesforce Commerce Cloud to Shopify," says Eric. "Five brands, 12 stores, distributed over multiple countries, tens of thousands of product records, hundreds of thousands of customers, millions of orders—it was huge."
The solution: Build a composable framework that scales across multiple brands
SLTWTR approached the migration for the family of brands by developing a strategy they call “solve for one by solving for many.”
Instead of developing individual websites for each brand, they built a single framework for the multi-brand organization that was highly composable. That way, they could assemble all the sites and have them be on brand by skinning at the component level.
For example, Billabong has a distinct content model and aesthetic that make it unique from the other brands in the family. On top of that, they have very distinct shoppers for men's versus women's products. Those different contexts require a distinct combination of content, commerce, and storytelling that needed to be accessible to the right consumer at the right time.
"For them to be able to assemble their site, assemble a page, assemble a view, assemble a component distinctly is absolutely critical,” says Eric. “For these brands to be able to author content distinctly and efficiently, it really came down to a development style that went hand in hand with what we were able to offer with a multi-brand composable stack.”
Move from bloated IT to rapid innovation
For the SLTWTR team, many of whom are surfers, working with these iconic surf brands on a successful migration was particularly meaningful. "I could really latch on to it as a surfer,” says Eric. “These are brands that I grew up with, so that was just very rewarding to be able to work with these aspirational entities."
One of the most significant outcomes was the brands' ability to redirect resources from a bloated IT team managing their infrastructure towards commerce innovation. By migrating to Shopify, they not only streamlined their operations but also reduced their total cost of ownership. This transition has allowed them to move quickly, launching new brands and features at an accelerated pace while achieving higher conversion rates.
“[This family of brands] had been tied to a very large, slow moving operation and large, slow moving infrastructure. By adopting Shopify as a part of their commerce stack, they're able to move much more quickly."
—Eric Panofsky, Founder and CEO, SLTWTR
The transition wasn't just successful from a technical standpoint—it was also smooth for the brands' teams. "There was a lot of pressure on the merchant as well to learn a new platform," says Eric. "They were able to learn and adapt to the Shopify platform as rapidly as we were able to develop on it." Thanks to Shopify's user-friendly interface and the range of resources and learning materials available, the lean team dedicated to commerce quickly adapted to the platform.
The results: Streamlined operations and increased innovation for enterprise brands
SLTWTR's success with enterprise clients like the family of brands they migrated demonstrates that agency size isn't the determining factor in handling complex migrations. Instead, their approach focuses on efficiency and platform expertise.
"SLTWTR's been committed to the concept of scaling by efficiency instead of scaling by size. We follow the lead of Shopify through some of the concepts like extensibility, and repeatability, and making things easier…That presents the opportunity for us to communicate with larger and larger clients, and speak comfortably with enterprise.”
—Eric Panofsky, Founder and CEO, SLTWTR
Their high merchant retention rate is a testament to this approach. At SLTWTR, they retain 90% of clients over a five-year period. The Shopify platform plays a crucial role in this success, innovating at a rate that means SLTWTR always has new functionality to implement, enhance, or operate on. It’s also provided them with year over year growth consistently since the partnership began in 2017.
SLTWTR’s success mirrors a broader industry trend towards increased speed, flexibility, and simplicity in large organizations. The agency has consistently stepped upmarket, taking on enterprise-scale clients and delivering increasingly disproportionate value. As a Shopify partner, they help these organizations overcome legacy systems and technical debt to improve their operations, smoothing out strained vendor relationships in the process. The result is a strong, collaborative partnership that drives quick, innovative solutions at scale for these brands.
Looking ahead, SLTWTR is highly focused on multi-brand organizations, either bringing them to Shopify or helping those already on the platform adopt a more composable stack. As a lean agency that’s made a name for themselves, they’ll keep riding this enterprise commerce wave.
