David’s Bridal (David’s) represents one of the most ambitious digital transformations in retail history. The wedding retailer has a 75-year legacy, nearly 200 retail stores, and one out of every three brides in the US walks down the aisle in a David’s gown. So adding disruption to the mix? That’s a huge risk.
“But it’s possible that the risk of not taking a digital transformation was even greater,” Elina Vilk, David’s Bridal’s President and CBO told us.
That’s because, over the course of their rich history, their technology had aged.
“We were no longer able to provide the experience we wanted,” David’s Bridal’s CIO Ravi Raparla told us. “We knew it was time for a modernization, and we knew we needed a completely new, unified foundation.”
So, they embarked on what CEO Kelly Cook calls their “Aisle to Algorithm” transformation, changing every single thing about how they run their company. And with Shopify at the center of that strategy, their risk paid off. They accomplished what typically takes years in just 9 months, including:
- A complete ecommerce replatform
- The launch of a new Canadian ecommerce site
- The revolutionary Diamonds & Pearls concept store powered by unified customer profiles
- First-of-its kind interactive digital screens with ‘endless aisle’ shopping and real-time inventory capabilities
The challenge: Old systems blocked big ambitions
Over the course of their 75-year history, David’s had become an icon in the wedding industry, but their technology carried the marks of every era they’d passed through.
As Ravi explained, some of their previous tech “was written in languages you can’t even find support for anymore.” Rather than focusing on evolving to meet the needs of today’s bride, they were bogged down by maintenance and technical debt. Routine updates, patches, hosting, and security demands consumed their time, leaving little room for innovation. New ideas often stalled before they began due to the significant time and resources required to bring them to life.
Actioning their data was also a struggle. Despite having an impressive ~200 data elements on every bride, their technology didn’t allow them to serve a personalized experience at the right time along each bride’s unique journey.
As Kelly put it, they could either “change or die,” so they knew modernization across all their sales channels was essential.
But their vision extended far beyond typical retail modernization—as a company that sits at the intersection of retail and hospitality, they had aspirations to provide their brides with a “high-end hospitality-type experience,” as Elina referred to it. “We want to know her name, her preferences, we want to have her styles waiting for her in the fitting room.”
Oh, and did we mention that they also wanted to launch a first-of-its-kind bridal concept store complete with an “endless aisle experience”?
None of this was possible on their aging and fragmented multi-vendor tech stack, so they set about searching for a technology partner that could not only bring about their much-needed modernization, but help them become, in Kelly’s words, “the largest AI enabled media and tech marketplace serving the bridal industry.”
In modern commerce, you either change or die. So we had to modernize every single touch point we had.
The solution: A modern foundation for speed, personalization, and continuous innovation
After evaluating the options, Shopify was the clear choice to deliver their vision.
What set Shopify apart:
- Modern and built to scale—grows with the business, no rebuilds required
- Fully managed—hosting, security, and updates handled by Shopify, so the team can fully focus on the brides
- Unified online and in‑store—one system and a single customer view empower more personalized experiences
- Centralized inventory—better forecasting and the ability to become asset-lite
- Flexible checkout and payments—supports appointments, tailoring, and deposits to fit their retail‑hospitality model
- Faster time to market—rich native features and extensibility powered by Shopify’s ecosystem to speed up launches and iterations
- Continuous innovation—Shopify’s pace of development gave them confidence that the platform would not only meet their needs today, but into the future as well
Backed by Shopify’s platform flexibility, David’s then tackled an ambitious nine‑month transformation.
“Most retailers get a year or two to do this because it takes time to change at this scale, so it's unheard of to go this fast,” explained Kelly, adding, “ I’ve been involved in a lot of replatformings throughout my career, and this was by far the speediest.”
Here’s what the team delivered:
The ecommerce replatform and Canadian site launch
David’s undertook a complete overhaul of their ecommerce experience, not only migrating their existing US site from its old platform to Shopify, but also launching a new Canadian ecommerce site.
Ravi explained that “we knew Shopify was obviously powerful on the ecommerce side,” but seeing their site live on Shopify exceeded their expectations.
“My jaw hit the floor when I saw the site,” recounted Kelly. “I could not believe the difference. As soon as my mouse hovered over the menu and I saw how fast the dropdowns came down, I was like ‘Things are about to get real! This is awesome!’ It absolutely ignited our transformation.”
Elina also noted that immediately upon launch, “We already have better analytics—those brilliant basics that tell us what’s selling, what’s not selling, and getting really deep into the unified customer profiles are really critical to our business, but we couldn’t do that before Shopify.”
And the hosting, security, and feature update concerns that used to keep them up at night? Instantly gone as soon as they were live on Shopify.
First-of-its kind digital screens powering a new concept store
Not only did David’s know that Shopify would help them unify their online and offline channels to better serve their brides, but they had also recently uncovered a fascinating data point that only a unified platform like Shopify could help them action—90% of all brides in the US hit their funnel at least once.
“At the time, we weren’t serving the full spectrum of the bridal market,” Kelly explained, “so we knew we needed something for the couture bride.”
Out of that vision, Diamonds & Pearls was born.
The first location, located in Delray Beach, Florida, and the newly opened second in Burlington, Massachusetts are different from all other David’s stores. The first thing you’d likely notice is its simplicity.
“When we started talking to couture brides to learn more about what they want, the word ‘simple’ is what really stood out to us,” explained Kelly. The team learned that brides can sometimes feel overwhelmed by the amount of product in stores, while still wanting enough options to give them confidence that they could find a dress that’s uniquely them.
In response, David’s deployed an endless aisle strategy, developing interactive digital touchscreens powered by custom POS extensions built on Shopify's APIs. The screens allow the David’s stylists, dubbed “Dream Makers,” to simply tap a bride’s profile and immediately load all her information and preferences based on the countless hours of research she’s already done—talk about a hospitality-driven experience.
The screens also give the bride access to more options than ever before through unified inventory visibility and cross-channel fulfillment capabilities. As Elina explained, “The bride could say ‘I like this dress but I want a different sleeve,’ we can make those adjustments and see them on the screen, then we likely have what she’s looking for, and if not in this store, we can ship it to her home.”
“Being able to show our entire catalog to the bride is something we could only accomplish on Shopify,” added Ravi. “In fact, Shopify with its API and platform extensibility capabilities made creating this experience honestly pretty easy because the platform does all the heavy lifting.”
One of the unique things about our situation is that we’re not a traditional retailer. We’re somewhere between retail and hospitality. This prompted us to explore what’s the best technology to allow us to create the best version of this experience.
The result: A platform that delivers their vision—and supports what’s next
David’s “Aisle to Algorithm” transformation, powered by Shopify, delivered the experience they needed to meet the moment, but also paved the way for them to continue innovating for years to come.
Here’s how the team describes the impact:
According to Ravi, “Shopify is taking on the heavy lifting so we can focus on what we do, like creating amazing experiences for brides,” adding that “we’ll be able to leverage the investments Shopify is making so we can continue to evolve with our customers and meet their needs.”
For Kelly, there’s already been a huge weight lifted off her shoulders, knowing that solutions to their problems are now typically weeks or months rather than years away. “I’ll give you an example. I’m in a meeting, and we realized we were having a problem, when someone on the team tells me that Shopify has already built the functionality to solve this issue. Shopify is literally fast tracking our digital transformation serendipitously.”
Elina echoed that sentiment, adding that they’re able to evolve their corporate business strategy for the better because of the functionality that’s available to them on Shopify. “It’s hard to find a technology partner that can do that. The future is pretty endless with what we can do on Shopify.”
With that eye towards the future, David’s is confident that Shopify is making the right investments that will benefit their business in the long run. “I know Shopify is thinking about things like AI and making our site agentic ready so I don’t have to,” said Ravi. “It’s taken off my plate, so now I can build on that foundation.”
“Shopify is committed to continuous innovation,” added Rohan. “They’re continuously evolving the platform to match the customer's needs and staying ahead of what retailers want.”
David’s didn’t need to trade history for speed. With Shopify, they kept both—and gained a foundation to keep innovating.
For established retailers contemplating similar transformations, David’s demonstrates that legacy doesn’t have to mean limitation. With the right platform and the courage to avoid standing still, it becomes an advantage that compounds.
It’s hard to find a technology partner where you could actually change your corporate business strategy based on the functionality they have, but that’s where we are with Shopify.
