53.03%
Revenue up 53.03%
Bargain Chemist: Rebuilding a High-Volume Pharmacy Shopify Store Without Missing a Beat
Bargain Chemist is one of New Zealand's fastest-growing discount pharmacy retailers, with a large physical store network and a huge online catalogue. Their Shopify store was handling serious volume, but the foundation underneath it was six years old: a legacy theme built before Online Store 2.0, held together with custom CSS pages, accumulated workarounds, and third-party dependencies that had outgrown their original purpose.
With ambitious growth targets ahead, the site needed a modern foundation. The catch: this is a working pharmacy business. Orders don't stop, prescriptions don't wait, and compliance obligations don't pause for a replatform. The upgrade had to happen with minimal downtime and no lasting disruption to how stores dispatch orders every day.
Challenges
- A six-year technology gap: Moving from a pre-OS 2.0 legacy theme to a modern Enterprise theme isn't a reskin. Years of customisations, hardcoded CSS pages, and one-off fixes had to be untangled, understood, and either rebuilt properly or retired.
- Legacy dispatch systems: Bargain Chemist's stores fulfil online orders through a custom in-store dispatch portal: a system central to daily operations, but with limited documentation available. We had to reverse-engineer its behaviour and rebuild it to work with the new setup.
- Complex shipping rules managed by a third party: Shipping logic (including rural surcharges, same-day delivery via Uber Direct, and rules for regulated products) sat inside a third-party app that was reaching end of life. With no support path forward and limited visibility into the configuration, everything had to be rebuilt from scratch under Bargain Chemist's control before the new site could go live.
- Compliance at every step: Pharmacy retail carries obligations most ecommerce projects never touch. Regulated products need consent and questionnaire flows, pharmacist-only items need controls, and pricing for pharmacy services needs to be accurate across every store location.
- A catalogue of 22,000+ products: A new navigation structure meant remapping the entire catalogue - over 22,000 products - to new category structures, with redirects planned so years of SEO value and customer bookmarks didn't break.
Solutions
- Strategic theme upgrade: We moved Bargain Chemist to a modern Enterprise OS 2.0 theme, replacing custom CSS pages with flexible, editable sections the team can manage themselves. UX improvements were baked in throughout - better navigation, cleaner product discovery, and a faster path to purchase.
- Shipping logic rebuilt in-house: We replaced the end-of-life shipping app with a Blackpepper-built solution covering rural surcharges, Uber Direct same-day delivery, and tag-based rules for regulated products. Bargain Chemist now owns and controls its shipping logic, with no dependency on unsupported third-party software.
- Dispatch portal replicated from the ground up: With limited documentation to work from, we mapped how the existing in-store dispatch portal behaved, then rebuilt it to work seamlessly with the new theme. The new portal is easy to use and navigate, with visible, timestamped logs so syncs and updates can be monitored and debugged. Stores kept dispatching orders without interruption.
- Compliance built into the platform: We built consent and questionnaire flows for regulated products, and a structured, metaobject-based system for pharmacy services and pricing that stays accurate across every store location.
- Catalogue and SEO migration at scale: Over 22,000 products were mapped to a new three-level navigation structure, with comprehensive redirect management to protect search rankings and existing customer journeys.
Results
In the first 30 days post-launch (compared to the 30 days prior), the new site delivered immediate uplift across the board.
66.11%
Sessions up 66.11%
55.24%
Purchases (Orders) up 55.24%
62.47%
Desktop revenue up 62.47%
59.67%
Desktop purchases up 59.67%
47.62%
Mobile revenue up 47.62%
52.61%
Mobile purchases up 52.61%
A strategic growth partnership
The upgrade is the foundation for what comes next. Bargain Chemist has set ambitious growth targets over the coming years, and hitting them takes more than a modern website; it takes a partner who understands the whole picture.
Blackpepper is working alongside Bargain Chemist as a strategic, full-service partner across development, lifecycle marketing and CRO. Rather than one-off projects, we're building a shared roadmap: identifying where the biggest opportunities sit, prioritising the work that moves the numbers, and delivering it with the team that rebuilt the platform and knows it inside out.
With the technical foundation sorted, the focus shifts to growth, driving more traffic, converting more of it, and bringing customers back more often.
The technical rebuild is done. Now the growth story starts.
"This project was about far more than launching a new website. It was about building the right foundations for the future of our ecommerce business, creating a better customer experience today while enabling what's next. Throughout the project, the team acted as a genuine strategic partner, bringing valuable thinking, challenging assumptions and helping us navigate the complexity behind the scenes. The result is more than a new website; it's a platform that positions us to continue enhancing the customer experience, support our growing store network, expand our digital capabilities, and accelerate the next phase of our growth."
Peter Shenoda
CEO, Bargain Chemist
Tech Used
- Shopify (Enterprise OS 2.0 theme)
- GoSweetSpot (rural surcharges)
- Uber Direct (same-day delivery)
- Shopify Metaobjects (pharmacy services and pricing)
- Custom CarrierService API (shipping logic)
- Custom dispatch portal (in-store fulfilment)
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