Boohoo
Group
Senior developer with Boohoo Group, migrating individual brands onto a new unified, headless, React‑based platform. Enabling shared functionality and customisable components.
In Detail
Five years ago, following its acquisition of Debenhams, Boohoo Group started a replatforming project to move multiple brands onto one headless e‑commerce platform. The work needed to support shared delivery whilst still allowing each brand to keep its own identity, merchandising needs, and growth plans.
Coming off the back of several years working with John Lewis and then Selfridges, I joined the team as a senior engineer, focusing primarily on the development of all‑new, brand‑themeable, React‑based components in Storybook. These components were designed and developed with both flexibility and reusability in mind, intended to be used across any one of the many (and different) Boohoo Group websites.
Developing shared components in this way allowed us to maintain the individual identity and aesthetic of each brand whilst taking advantage of the economies of scale that having a shared, highly documented codebase like this affords us. It also meant that we could improve consistency and accessibility across each brand from a single point.
As you might imagine, aside from the development side of this role, there was also a significant people‑centric aspect to it, working closely with stakeholders across the brands to ensure that the components we developed (and then used to build each brand PLP and PDP in particular) fitted with their specific needs.
We integrated these components on top of a unified, headless platform alongside CommerceTools and AEM for legacy content. That gave the migrated brands a shared implementation with brand‑specific storefronts on top. From launch, the brands that moved to the new system saw a significant uptick in visitors and conversions to sales, whilst overall operational costs were reduced.
Two Homepages, One Codebase
Both the Boohoo and Debenhams homepages sit on the same architecture, the same code, and the same components. The differences lie in the way each has been themed and how the shared components have been templated, allowing the Boohoo homepage to keep its neo‑brutalist aesthetic, whilst Debenhams retains a more subtle design.
Sharing components in this way means that maintenance and future feature development can be rolled out to each brand (and ‑ eventually ‑ other brands within the Boohoo Group) from a single codebase.
As with many other projects I've worked on, the content comes from an AEM instance, giving content creators (for each individual brand) the freedom to lay out and publish the homepage as they see fit, headlessly.
Product Listing Pages & Filters
Product Listing and Details pages are where the different brands within the Group differ the most. Nevertheless, for the PLPs, the same approach is true everywhere within this project: these are all shared components from the same Component Library, with different themes applied.
This variation in styling via themes ensures that the core functionality of each component is preserved whilst allowing each brand to maintain its own unique aesthetic.
Product Detail Pages
In any e‑commerce application, the PDP is the most important page of the site. It is here that a website (hopefully) offers the user all of the information they need to decide whether to purchase the product or not.
Here, my team and I developed several featureful components, in particular, the gallery carousel and the way the product imagery is presented. This varied significantly between brands and was a real challenge to develop in a way that could be used across the group.
Aside from the gallery, we also have all the features you would expect for a PDP: size guides, colour options and ‑ of course ‑ the ability to buy.
The Outcome
This project provided Boohoo Group with a shared e‑commerce foundation that could support multiple brands whilst allowing each to retain its own identity and customer experience. The brands that were moved onto the new platform saw a significant increase in visitors and conversions to sales, whilst the shared architecture helped reduce overall operational costs.
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It's been a pleasure to work with John Kavanagh in the web team at Nando’s. He's a top professional who has prided himself in bringing my designs to life with a high standard since day one. He has a great eye for detail with a clear understanding of user‑centric thinking and is always willing to give great suggestions from a technical standpoint.
I have also really appreciated his positive energy which gives a great lift to the team at every stand up. Any team would be lucky to work with him, as I have experienced myself!"
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John Kavanagh is one of the most open‑minded developers I have ever worked with. His appreciation of great creative work, his enthusiasm and 'anything is possible' attitude is always a breath of fresh air. I worked with him on several successful projects in our days at McCann Worldgroup. Since then we have collaborated on many freelance projects and he's always been super efficient and effective, combining a great work ethic with immense talent. If I ever have a creative digital project which needed bringing to life, John is the first developer I call on."
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I worked with John Kavanagh on a high profile, large‑scale project at a digital agency. John was great to work with, solving problems without any input and contributing to the project way beyond what was expected. I'd happily work with him again and would easily recommend his talent to everyone!"
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I initially worked with John Kavanagh at Style.com where we built an e‑commerce site for Condé Nast. We built numerous versions of the site for prototypal purposes and finally went live with a version that contained the majority of work from John and his team. Always punctual, proactive and willing, he's definitely one to have in any development team. Since then we went on to work together again at HSBC where we built a number of key React components. He's a great team player who takes a lot of pride in his work, I'd highly recommend him."
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John Kavanagh is an incredibly talented and efficient developer with great expertise in Gatsby and Contentful. He is incredibly personable and also always willing to share his knowledge. I also appreciated his ability to communicate openly and in a way that allowed me to find a way forward with him.
It was a pleasure to work with John and I would welcome another opportunity to work with him again!"
