The same hydraulics distributor’s commerce stack was at end-of-life. Magento 1, schema AI Overviews couldn’t read, and 600ms-plus INP that was killing add-to-cart on mobile category browsing. A six-month replatform moved all 8,500 SKUs onto a headless Next.js + Shopify Hydrogen storefront, with a complete schema graph live on the first deploy.
8,500
SKUs migrated to the headless storefront
600ms+
INP on mobile category browsing, before the rebuild
JIC/NPT
Spec configurators built into the quote flow
6 mo
Kickoff to full catalog live
The situation
Magento 1 was past end-of-life: no patches, an aging integration surface, and a storefront whose structured data predated everything AI engines now read. On mobile, category browsing ran at 600ms-plus INP. Add-to-cart behaves the way you’d expect at 600ms. Customers left.
Whether to replatform wasn’t really the question — the platform had answered it. The question was whether the new stack would just be newer, or become a foundation the catalog and AI-search work could actually compound on.
The constraint
Buying hydraulic fittings is spec-driven: thread form, size, pressure rating. The old quote flow had years of that domain logic baked in, and an off-the-shelf theme would have flattened it. The replatform had to carry 8,500 SKUs and the spec-selection workflow across without simplifying either one.
What we ran
Next.js storefront over a Shopify Hydrogen commerce backend — server-rendered product and category pages, with category browsing rebuilt specifically for interaction latency.
Custom quote flow with JIC/NPT spec configurators, so engineers spec fittings by thread, size, and pressure rating instead of paging through the catalog.
Full structured-data graph shipped with the storefront. The legacy stack’s biggest invisible defect was schema AI engines couldn’t read — the new one launched citable.
This is what a Website Development engagement at this scale looks like in practice.
Why it worked
Platform work doesn’t generate demand. It lifts the ceiling on everything that does. The rebuild took the friction out of the two places a distributor wins or loses business: the mobile category browse, where 600ms of input delay was costing carts, and the machine-readability layer, where AI engines decide whom to cite.
What happened
The full catalog was live in six months. Schema graph in place from launch, quote flow and configurators carried over intact.
The growth came next. The six months after launch are the catalog + AI-search engagement written up in its own case study, where qualified inbounds rose 43% off the post-launch baseline. The replatform is what made that slope possible. We report the two separately so neither one claims the other’s work.
The number that mattered
8,500
SKUs replatformed in six months
Magento 1 → Next.js + Shopify Hydrogen
Measurement notes
A metric without a source is an assertion. Every number on this page is listed below with how it was counted.
Anonymity. Client name withheld under NDA. Most industrial distributors prefer the case study without the logo. The vertical, scale, timeline, and every number are exactly as measured. Only the identifying details are removed. Reference calls available on request.
Same client, different service
Industrial hydraulics distributor~8,500 SKUs
Anonymized · NDA+43.5%
Qualified leads per month, on the August baseline
Aug 2024 – Jan 2025 · client CRM
An ~8,500-SKU hydraulics distributor was stuck at 1,840 qualified inbounds a month. AI Overviews were citing its manufacturers, not its own category pages. Six months of catalog and AI-search work later, January closed at 2,640. That’s +43.5% over the August baseline, and we didn’t add a dollar of ad spend.
More case studies
Full engagement
Industrial hydraulics distributor~8,500 SKUs
Named · with consent+43.5%
Qualified leads a month, across the full engagement
2022 – 2025 · client CRM
Northern Hydraulics is an industrial hydraulics distributor — ~8,500 SKUs of JIC/NPT fittings, adapters, and assemblies sold to engineers and MRO buyers. Over a three-year relationship (2022–2025) we ran the whole growth function: brand and design, a Magento 1 to headless replatform, AI-search and technical SEO, an AI-assisted catalog rewrite, pillar content, paid ads, and cold outbound. Qualified leads went from 1,840 to 2,640 a month, up 43.5%.
Industrial hydraulics distributor~8,500 SKUs
Named · with consent8,500
SKUs replatformed off Magento 1
6 months · schema-complete from day one
Northern Hydraulics ran an 8,500-SKU catalog on Magento 1, which hit end-of-life with no security patches and product markup AI search engines couldn't parse. Over 6 months we replatformed the whole catalog to a headless Next.js storefront on Shopify Hydrogen, schema-complete from day one, and carried the JIC/NPT spec quote flow across intact. Mobile category-browse INP dropped from 600ms+ to under 200ms. This was the web-dev cut of the full engagement; the qualified-lead growth is reported on the anchor study.
Industrial hydraulics distributor~8,500 SKUs
Named · with consent×8.5
AI-Overview citations, top 50 commercial queries
4 → 34 · 6-month engagement
Northern Hydraulics is an industrial hydraulics distributor with ~8,500 SKUs. On the top 50 commercial queries, AI Overviews were citing its manufacturers, not its own pages, so it sat in AI answers exactly 4 times. Six months of product-schema and answer-shaped page work took that to 34 AIO citations (×8.5), making the distributor the citable source instead of its suppliers.
Your catalog, same standard
Held to the same standard as the studies above: we measure where you stand today — organic and AI-search visibility across your top categories — and show you the baseline before we propose a thing.