Case study
Full‑stack, full speed: Ellis Brigham rebuilds their digital experience with Centra
Ellis Brigham elevates site performance and reclaims its brand identity.
Ellis Brigham has been pioneering outdoor sports since 1933. From its roots making walking boots in Manchester, Northern England, the company expanded into mountaineering, climbing, and skiing, bringing climbing gear to the UK before anyone else. Today, with 24 stores nationwide, Ellis Brigham remains a cornerstone of the UK outdoor community.
Technical debt and a blurred brand identity
Running Ellis Brigham and its subsidiary brand, The Snowboard Asylum, on a shared Magento backend had created long-standing operational strain. Years of accumulated technical debt meant the team were spending most of their time just keeping the platform stable.
Huge amounts of our retainer were spent just keeping Magento stable. It became a real headache, and we couldn’t progress with any ‘nice-to-haves’ or develop the overall brand experience because so much time was tied up in managing technical debt.
Online Manager at Ellis Brigham
Performance on their online storefront was equally limiting. Product listing pages could take up to 20 seconds to load and the site consistently failed Core Web Vitals. These constraints shaped how the brand appeared online, making it difficult to express its own character or stand apart from the products it sold. This challenge was compounded by reliance on supplier assets—product imagery, marketing, and brand narratives that weren’t their own.
We never really spoke about ourselves. We were just a good repository of brands.
Online Manager at Ellis Brigham
Seeking flexibility and control
Making the decision to replatform, the team evaluated several platform options, including staying on Magento with a headless frontend or migrating to Shopify Plus. But neither offered the freedom or scalability they needed.
With Shopify, you’re very much locked into their ecosystem. If you don’t like the way something works, you just have to accept it. Centra gave us more flexibility
Head of Operations at Ellis Brigham
The team discovered Centra while researching Paul Smith’s transition from headless Magento. Conversations with Limesharp confirmed that Centra provided the flexibility, composability, and control needed to manage multiple brands and complex product ranges.
Starting from scratch: a complete rebuild
Ellis Brigham didn't just migrate platforms—they rebuilt their entire tech stack.
We migrated our PIM, changed our payment provider, updated our search and merchandising tools—everything got ripped up and had to be rebuilt.
Online Manager at Ellis Brigham
Partnering with Limesharp, the team underwent a three-month brand discovery phase to re-establish Ellis Brigham’s digital identity to compete with the rising wave of DTC outdoor brands. As the rebuild was happening, the team built a studio, hired a photographer and stylist, and began producing original content for new product drops and seasonal campaigns. Combined with Centra’s flexible architecture, Ellis Brigham regained full control over how the brand appeared and evolved online.
Five years ago we competed with other resellers; now we compete with the brands we sell. We relied on brand marketing, but it started taking market share from us. So we focused on making Ellis Brigham feel like its own brand—and that’s reflected in the results.
Head of Operations at Ellis Brigham
Speed, conversion, impact
Since moving to Centra, Ellis Brigham has seen improvements across every key metric:
30% increase in organic traffic, driven by stronger UX and vastly improved performance.
95% of pages now pass Google Core Web Vitals, compared to failing across the board on Magento.
180% increase in use of on-site search, thanks to faster load times and a more intuitive structure.
36% increase in add-to-carts, reflecting smoother navigation and more effective product discovery.
Most importantly, the new setup finally removed the operational drag of maintaining legacy systems.
We’re only bound by our imagination. We can explore new ideas, deliver them quickly, and keep functionality fresh and ahead of the curve…Ellis Brigham now looks like one cohesive experience.
Online Manager at Ellis Brigham
A brand destination
With the new stack in place, Ellis Brigham is focused on refining the customer experience—optimizing PDPs, improving omnichannel capabilities, and using Centra’s allocation rules to maintain accurate inventory across stores. One immediate win has been displaying accurate in-store stock levels, so customers always know what’s available.
In Magento, we had to take everything with a bit of a pinch of salt, we can now kind of look in Centra and trust the data that we're seeing there.
Online Manager at Ellis Brigham
When good data meets a strong brand, the possibilities are limitless. Going headless with Centra has given Ellis Brigham the freedom to move fast, experiment, and deliver new functionality without the constraints of templates or legacy systems. The result is a digital flagship that performs—and finally reflects the Ellis Brigham brand.
Ellis Brigham’s tech stack
| Ecommerce platform | Centra |
|---|---|
| Front-end partner | Limesharp |
| CRM | Voyado |
| POS | Sitoo |
| PIM | Akeneo |
| Deliveries | Ingrid |
| Payments | Adyen |
| CMS | Storyblok |
| Search and Merch | Voyado |
| ERP | Accent |
