Boot Barn Integration Portal
Standardization of microfrontends development — Success story
About the Company
Boot Barn Inc. is the largest retailer of cowboy boots, western hats, and workwear in the United States. With over 550 physical stores and multiple online platforms, including BootBarn.com and Sheplers.com, Boot Barn processes millions of orders each year. The company relies heavily on its IT infrastructure to maintain operational efficiency and manage its growing online presence.
In 2015, Boot Barn acquired Sheplers, a key competitor, which required the consolidation of IT systems and business processes. As part of this consolidation, Boot Barn needed a modern and flexible solution to manage its eCommerce and integration operations effectively.
Challenges
With systems inherited from both Boot Barn and Sheplers, managing integration and eCommerce processes across departments became increasingly complex. Boot Barn needed a unified UI to centralize these processes, ensuring all departments could operate in sync. However, the solution also needed to be adaptable, scalable, and capable of evolving with the business’s specific requirements.
A traditional monolithic frontend lacked the flexibility required for future growth and rapid changes. On the other hand, a distributed frontend architecture seemed less viable due to the internal team's limited experience with microfrontends, the absence of established best practices, and the lack of deep knowledge in the required patterns. This raised concerns about longer implementation timelines and higher costs.
The Solution We Proposed
Enterprise Innovation Consulting recommended a microapplications-based architecture from the Better Microfrontends Program to address Boot Barn’s requirements and ease concerns about distributed frontend architecture. The program provided a strong foundation of best practices and ready-to-use templates with required design patterns, which were instrumental in speeding up development and enabling Boot Barn to adopt the new architecture efficiently, without being overwhelmed by its complexity.
To meet the requirement of consistent extensibility, this approach allowed each microapplication to be developed, deployed, and upgraded independently, ensuring the flexibility and scalability necessary as Boot Barn’s operations expanded.
What We Did
Enterprise Innovation Consulting (EIC) developed a reference architecture for microapplications, providing a foundation for scalable and independent development.
Within just a few months, we created templates using the required design patterns, initially implemented in AngularJS.
As the system evolved over the next 2-3 years, we facilitated two migrations to newer versions of Angular, developing updated templates along with detailed instructions for seamless upgrades.
The Result
The BootBarn Integration Portal provided a unified UI for managing integration and eCommerce operations, built with a flexible architecture designed for long-term scalability. By leveraging loosely coupled microapplications, the system supported incremental development and ensured that each component could be independently deployed, updated, and allowed the entire frontend app to be extended as needed.
This modular approach allowed for continuous improvements, enabling BootBarn to respond rapidly to changing business requirements. Additionally, it empowered BootBarn’s internal development team to take full ownership of the portal’s evolution, giving them the ability to add new tools or features independently, even after the project’s completion.
Performance Improvements:
● 2x increase in productivity, compared to initial estimates if the microfrontend development had been handled solely by the internal team.
● 30% faster time to market for new features and tools, driven by the use of reusable templates and standardization.
Testimonial
Nick Jimenez
Director of Development and Integrations
MST Global
Managing integration and eCommerce processes across departments was a complex task for us, especially with systems inherited from both BootBarn and Sheplers. We needed a unified UI to keep all teams aligned while ensuring flexibility for future growth. On top of that, we required a solution that could scale and adapt to our evolving needs. A traditional monolithic system just wouldn’t cut it.
Enterprise Innovation Consulting delivered exactly that with the BootBarn Integration Portal. Their microapplications-based approach allowed us to update, deploy, and scale components independently, giving us the agility to adapt quickly to changing business needs.
Since implementing the portal, we’ve doubled productivity and improved time to market for new features by 30%. EIC’s solution not only solved our immediate challenges but also empowered our internal team to continue evolving the platform.
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