Northwind Commerce
Unified storefront and ops dashboard for a multi-region retailer—latency down, conversion up, and a design system the team still ships with.
Scope
Product design, front-end engineering, design system
Timeline
6 months
Stack
Next.js, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS
What we were solving for
Northwind operated three separate storefronts built over six years, each with its own cart engine, analytics stack, and inconsistent UI. Checkout abandon rates were climbing and the ops team couldn't see real-time inventory across regions without switching between four different dashboards.
How we thought about it
We audited every user flow end-to-end before touching a single component. A consolidated design system came first—tokens, typography, and a component library that both the storefront and internal ops tool could share. Engineering embedded alongside our designers from sprint two onwards, ensuring the system was buildable before it was finalised.
How we worked
through it
01
Audit & alignment
Three weeks of stakeholder interviews, analytics deep-dives, and session recordings. We mapped every decision point in the existing checkout flow and identified the nine highest-impact friction points.
What we measured
after we shipped
38%
Checkout conversion lift
Measured over 90-day post-launch window vs same period prior year.
61ms
P95 API latency
Down from 340ms before the platform consolidation.
3→1
Codebase reduction
Three legacy repos collapsed into a single monorepo.
4×
Faster feature delivery
From idea to production deploy, measured over six post-launch sprints.
“Tachyon didn't just redesign our store—they rebuilt our capability to keep improving it ourselves. Six months in and our own team has shipped more than we did in the previous two years.”