Headless e-commerce platform for a furniture manufacturer
A storefront with a sofa catalog, model configuration, ordering, and online payments — built to work as the factory's primary direct-to-consumer sales channel.
About the Project
An online store where end customers pick sofas by collection, dimensions, mechanism type, upholstery, and color. Shoppers can browse photos and descriptions, configure sofa models, add items to the cart, choose delivery options, and pay online. From the customer account, buyers see their order history, current delivery status, and care recommendations for the models they've purchased.
About Customer
Jacques started with high-end designer sofas before expanding into the mass market. While not coming from a technical background, he is deeply focused on product quality and craftsmanship — down to the smallest details in stitching, fabrics, and how a sofa fits into a real interior. One of his sofas is part of the interior of former French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s family home.
Complex product
A single sofa is dozens of variations across size, corner, fabric, color, and hardware. The challenge was to surface that complexity without losing the buyer.
Large catalog
A wide range of collections and product lines was on the roadmap. The site needed minimal, readable filters that still covered dimensions, style, fabric, price segment, and fold-out mechanism.
Integration with the back-office system
Prices, stock levels, and the base product data had to come from the manufacturer's internal ERP/warehouse system, so content managers wouldn't be duplicating it manually.
Performance and image quality
Sofas live and die on visual presentation: large photos, fabric variants, close-ups of stitching. Without optimization, that becomes a heavy load on every page — especially on mobile.
Parallel sales channels
The site had to support promotions, promo codes, and special pricing for selected collections, while staying in sync with offline sales.
Data migration
Existing customers and the product database had to be migrated in a way that preserved accounts, order history, and the familiar login flow.
Proposed Solution
We built a full headless e-commerce platform. Directus serves as the core for the catalog and orders, while a Next.js frontend delivers a fast storefront with a sofa configurator, cart, payments, and customer account. Integration with the factory's back-office system keeps prices and stock current with no manual duplication.
Purchase journeys
We started by defining the main buying flows. Separately, we defined the scenarios for returns and orders that get finalized later by a manager.
Catalog and product model
In Directus, we designed a collection → model → variant structure. Core characteristics live at the model level, while dimensions, fabrics, colors, and price modifiers live at the variant level. That simplifies catalog maintenance, makes new fabrics easy to add, and lays the ground for flexible filters.
Next.js storefront
On the frontend, we built a catalog with filters, collection pages, sofa product pages with a configurator, cart, checkout, and customer account. Next.js handles fast rendering and SEO-friendly page structure. Images are optimized per device, support detail viewing, and switch fabric variants without reloading the page.
Order processing and payments
The checkout logic calculates the total based on the selected configuration, delivery, and discounts. We also integrated a payment provider for online card payments. Webhook events sync payment statuses between the backend and the back-office system.
Factory back-office system
We set up data exchange between Directus and the client's back-office system. We designed the integration so the site continues operating on the last valid data even if synchronization temporarily fails.
Infrastructure and performance
We deployed the frontend and backend to run in the cloud, with catalog pages cached and images delivered through a CDN. We also implemented admin forms and views in Directus for the operations team to manage the catalog, promotions, orders, and promo codes.
We learned that the factory was selling sofas in showrooms, through dealers, and on an old site. The sales team walked us through the typical questions buyers ask; marketing shared current and planned promotions. From that, we shaped the goals for the new store: simplify model selection online, plug e-commerce into ad campaigns, and cut down empty calls.
Results
The new e-commerce store became the factory's main digital storefront. Customers can self-select a model, sales teams now work with qualified leads, and catalog and pricing stay in sync through the integration with the back-office system.
4 minutes
to pick a model — down from long back-and-forth in messaging apps
30–40% fewer
requests asking to explain the difference between variants
3 minutes
for price and stock updates to reflect on the site
98.8% of payments
clear automatically and correctly, with no manual intervention
1–2 seconds
page load on mobile
9 minutes
to launch a promo campaign with a code or special price
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