Unilever, a global consumer goods giant, sought to launch a direct-to-consumer (D2C) platform encompassing products from all its brands. The initial phase aimed at providing Unilever personnel a dedicated shopping platform with exclusive discounts and offers, bypassing third-party retailers.

Additionally, Unilever intended to extend this benefit to employees of selected partner companies.

Delivering a customized solution using Shopify

For this complex project, Spell & Sell focused on creating a visually appealing, responsive e-commerce platform adaptable to any device. Leveraging Shopify, our team delivered a highly customized solution adhering to Shopify's best practices in functionality, performance, and flexibility.

To meet Unilever’s specific business goals and regulatory requirements, we extended Shopify with advanced functionalities using custom Shopify extensions and in-house resilient solutions hosted on Google Cloud Platform.

Ensuring customer eligibility

Since the platform was initially available to individuals with corporate email addresses, we developed a mechanism to verify their eligibility during sign-up and periodically during sign-in. This was achieved through a custom One Time Password (OTP) solution, ensuring only eligible users could access the platform and benefit from the discounts.

Traditional Single Sign-On (SSO) mechanisms were deemed impractical due to the number of eligible companies and required integrations. Thus, our OTP solution, sent to corporate email addresses, provided a simple and effective method to verify eligibility, reducing account management overhead.

Supporting complex, tiered discounts

Unilever required tiered discounts based on customer attributes such as company affiliation and monthly spending. Shopify and Shopify Plus do not support tiered discounts inherently. To address this, we developed a robust solution that stored tiered discount configurations on each product using meta fields and calculated discounts at the line item level based on customer attributes.

Shopify Scripts and meta fields were crucial in ensuring accurate discount calculations while maintaining security. An external solution tracked each customer's monthly spending, a key factor in discount percentage calculations.

Delivering a seamless cart experience

A seamless cart experience across devices was essential. However, Shopify lacked built-in functionality for syncing cart items between devices. After experimenting with existing apps, we rolled out a custom solution ensuring robust synchronization of cart items across devices for each customer.

Addressing business processes, corporate structure, and local regulations

Unilever's size and corporate structure involved several outsourced business processes, such as warehouse management, order preparation, and delivery, handled by various partners with disparate systems. Our team coordinated these parties, defined workflows, integration points, and implemented an integration layer that enhanced Shopify API payloads, smoothing the fulfillment process using Google Cloud Platform technologies like Cloud Functions, Cloud Tasks, and Cloud Firestore.

Unilever's fulfillment locations, operating as separate business entities due to local regulations, presented a challenge. Shopify's native functionality did not support fulfillment based on customer location or separate business entities. We overcame this by implementing a solution supporting multiple merchant accounts of the same payment provider within a single Shopify store and an external custom solution for fulfilling items from the nearest center to the customer’s location.

Conclusion

Spell & Sell successfully delivered a highly customized and robust e-commerce platform for Unilever, addressing complex requirements and providing a seamless shopping experience for Unilever personnel and partner employees. Through innovative solutions and advanced technologies, we met Unilever's business goals, ensuring a smooth and efficient direct-to-consumer platform.