A new brand online in 2.5 months. Headless, composable, ready to scale.

Background

Einrichtungspartnerring VME is one of Germany's largest furniture buying groups and distributors, founded in 1964 and representing hundreds of furniture retailers across Germany and the Netherlands. The organisation had built a strong physical retail network under the Trendhopper brand — already established in the Netherlands — and was planning the brand's entry into the German market with a simultaneous launch of new offline stores and an online presence.

The Trendhopper concept is built around inspiring home living rather than transactional furniture retail — a "window shopping" experience designed to drive store visits rather than pure eCommerce conversion. This content-first model had significant implications for the technology choices.

The Challenge

The brief was demanding in its constraints:

• The launch had to coincide precisely with offline store openings, giving the project a non-negotiable go-live date
• The MVP needed to be designed and built from scratch — no existing digital template, no existing design system
• The "window shopping" model meant the initial experience would not include a shopping cart, requiring CMS to be the dominant capability
• The technology stack had to support future evolution toward full eCommerce without needing to be rebuilt
• The timeline allowed no room for lengthy discovery before design and build began in parallel

Our Solution

Divante began with rapid user journey workshops to establish the design direction and high-fidelity mockups. Rather than a traditional monolithic commerce platform, the team chose a three-layer headless architecture purpose-built for the Trendhopper model: Vue Storefront as the frontend (using Storefront UI for a lean, performant design layer), Shopify as the backend (rapid setup combined with VSF's new native Shopify integration), and Contentful as the CMS (the dominant layer for a content-first experience where editorial and inspiration content drives traffic to physical stores).

The MVP launched in December 2021 — on time with the offline store openings — and the project continued with iterative improvements building toward full eCommerce capability.

Impact & Results

• MVP launched in December 2021 as planned, delivered in approximately 2.5 months from project kickoff
• The headless architecture positioned the brand for iterative enhancement toward full eCommerce without a platform rebuild
• The brand team described the collaboration as producing design layouts that "fit the brand's identity well right away," with continuous feedback integration throughout the process