How Mervin Moved Three Snowboard Brands to One Shopify Plus Store

With its Adobe Commerce platform approaching end of life, Mervin Manufacturing needed to migrate three snowboard brands: Lib Tech, GNU, and Bent Metal. SwiftOtter moved all three to a single Shopify Plus store with three custom Hydrogen storefronts and a shared cart and checkout. The sites launched in 15 weeks, ahead of the fall selling season.

Mervin Manufacturing: Snowboards Built by Hand in the USA Since 1977

Mervin Manufacturing has been building snowboards in Carlsborg, Washington, since 1977. It's the last major snowboard factory in the USA and operates three brands: Lib Tech, GNU, and Bent Metal. Lib Tech is known for its technical snowboard designs, GNU for its asymmetrical boards and skate-influenced style, and Bent Metal for precision bindings.

Mervin sells directly to riders in the US, Canada, the UK, and Europe, as well as through specialty dealers. Many riders also buy across the brands, pairing Lib Tech or GNU boards with Bent Metal bindings.

Why Mervin Migrated Off Adobe Ahead of Snowboard Season

Mervin had been running all three brands on Adobe Commerce since 2018, while managing separate WordPress sites for their blogs. By early 2026, maintaining the platform had become increasingly expensive for its small web team, largely because of ongoing security patches and code updates. Their version of Adobe Commerce was approaching end of life in August, leaving Mervin facing a major upgrade to a platform they were already considering replacing.

The sites themselves had fallen behind, too. They hadn't been redesigned in about ten years, and the designs no longer reflected the quality of Mervin's boards.

Mervin wanted to sell Bent Metal bindings directly on the Lib Tech and GNU sites, bring its blog content into the same system as its products, and continue selling across all four markets.

New winter boards launch in late summer, and Mervin's busiest selling season begins in September. With the project kicking off in mid-May, the team had roughly three months to design, build, and launch all three storefronts, including integrations for ERP, tax, shipping, email, pro pricing, and multiple international markets.

Missing that window meant either launching in the middle of peak season or paying for another Adobe Commerce upgrade and contract renewal.

Choosing Between BigCommerce and Shopify for a Multi-Brand Store

Mervin was evaluating both BigCommerce and Shopify. BigCommerce’s multi-storefront capabilities could support multiple branded websites through one backend without requiring a headless build. Shopify already had a connector for BlueCherry, the ERP that manages Mervin's product and inventory data. Connecting BlueCherry to BigCommerce would have required custom integration work, and Mervin's previous BlueCherry integration with Adobe Commerce had been difficult and expensive to build.

SwiftOtter has worked in eCommerce since 2012 and builds on both BigCommerce and Shopify, so we laid out the costs and trade-offs of each platform. Once Mervin chose Shopify, we evaluated the best way to support their three brands on the platform.

One Shopify Plus Store With Three Headless Hydrogen Storefronts

SwiftOtter presented Mervin with two different paths for running three brands on Shopify.

Three separate Shopify stores. Each brand would get its own store, theme, ERP connection, and set of apps. Each storefront would have been simpler to build, but selling Bent Metal bindings across multiple stores would require additional inventory management and integrations. Customers would also have separate carts and accounts under this approach.

One Shopify Plus store with three headless storefronts. Mervin could share products, customers, and checkout across all three brands, while Hydrogen provided a separate storefront for each. This required more development up front, including a content management system that would let Mervin's team edit pages without relying on developers.

Selling Bent Metal bindings alongside Lib Tech and GNU boards was a priority for Mervin. A single Shopify Plus store made that possible without creating duplicate inventory records across separate stores. Mervin initially had concerns about the additional development involved in going headless, so SwiftOtter walked the team through both options. Mervin ultimately chose the single-store approach.

A Custom Storefront Design for Each Snowboard Brand

Each brand received its own Hydrogen storefront, designed from Mervin’s latest catalogs and style guides. Lib Tech’s darker design highlights its board graphics, GNU’s storefront is brighter and sleeker, and Bent Metal retains its signature red.

Product pages feature large board images and recommended products below the add-to-cart button, and Mervin’s Board Finder recommends boards based on each rider’s style and terrain. A brand switcher lets shoppers move between all three sites without losing their cart, and a “complete your setup” link in the main navigation points board shoppers to Bent Metal bindings.

Mervin’s team now builds and edits pages in Payload, a drag-and-drop editor inside the Shopify admin, without maintaining separate WordPress blogs.

Launching a Multi-Brand Shopify Plus Store in 15 Weeks

SwiftOtter began with two working sessions to map Mervin's order management, inventory, financial workflows, and integrations. The team designed Lib Tech's storefront first, then used that work to guide the designs for GNU and Bent Metal.

Development and testing ran across all three brands simultaneously, with code reviews, QA, and Mervin's own testing completed before launch.

Adobe Commerce remained available as a fallback during the transition in case critical issues arose at launch.

Results of Mervin's Shopify Plus Migration

Lib Tech, GNU, and Bent Metal launched together in August 2026, ahead of Mervin's busiest selling season. The migration allowed Mervin to retire Adobe Commerce without another major upgrade and gave all three brands their first full redesign in approximately a decade.

Mervin now manages all three brands through one Shopify Plus store, with a shared product catalog and ERP integration. Riders can seamlessly purchase products across brands in a single order.

Since launch, SwiftOtter has continued working with Mervin, including adding Bent Metal binding recommendations to Lib Tech's product listing and product pages.