Challenge
An Edmonton-based multi-vendor retailer was stuck on a legacy monolithic platform that could not handle traffic spikes, had a 6-second average page load, and required weeks of developer time for simple catalog changes.
Solution
Mapletech Labs rebuilt the entire platform as a headless commerce system using Next.js, Stripe for payments, Elasticsearch for product search, and a custom vendor management portal — delivered in 5 months.
Results
Revenue tripled within 8 months of launch. The platform now serves 2M+ monthly visitors with 99.9% uptime, 1.2-second average page loads, and zero downtime during Black Friday peak traffic.
The Challenge
Outgrowing a Legacy Monolith
Our client had built their original e-commerce platform on a tightly coupled monolithic architecture over five years ago. What started as a simple online storefront had evolved into a multi-vendor marketplace with thousands of SKUs, complex pricing rules, and a growing customer base — but the technology had not kept pace.
Page load times averaged 6 seconds. During sale events, the platform would buckle under traffic, leading to cart abandonment rates exceeding 70%. Simple catalog updates required direct database modifications by a developer, and the monolithic codebase made it nearly impossible to deploy features without risking regressions across the entire system.
The client needed a complete platform rebuild — but they couldn't afford downtime during the migration. They needed a partner who could architect a modern, scalable system and execute a seamless cutover without losing a single order or disrupting vendor operations.
Our Solution
Headless Commerce, Built for Scale
We architected a headless commerce platform using Next.js for the storefront, delivering server-side rendered pages with Incremental Static Regeneration (ISR) for product and category pages. This approach gave us the performance of a static site with the dynamic capabilities of a full application — resulting in sub-1.2-second page loads across all device types.
Stripe was integrated as the payment backbone, supporting multi-vendor payouts, subscription billing, and complex tax calculations across Canadian provinces. Elasticsearch powered the product search and filtering engine, delivering instant results across a catalog of 50K+ SKUs with faceted navigation, typo tolerance, and relevance tuning.
Redis handled session management, cart state, and real-time inventory synchronization across vendors. We built a custom vendor dashboard that allowed marketplace sellers to manage their own products, track orders, and view analytics — eliminating the bottleneck of centralized catalog management. The entire system was deployed on AWS with auto-scaling groups to handle traffic spikes gracefully.
Key Results
Revenue Growth That Speaks for Itself
“The migration was flawless — we didn't lose a single order during cutover. Within three months, our conversion rate doubled, and by Black Friday we handled 10x our normal traffic without a hiccup. Mapletech Labs turned our biggest liability into our strongest competitive advantage.”
VP of Digital Commerce
Leading Edmonton-Based Retailer