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B&H Photo Video: +40% sales on a rebuilt commerce platform
A web & mobile commerce platform for a 50,000+ product photo-video catalog — advanced search, side-by-side comparison and a zero-downtime migration.
+40%
sales growth
-60%
search time
50k+
products in catalog
The challenge
B&H Photo Video needed a complete commerce platform for a catalog of 50,000+ products carrying deep, highly technical specifications — and a migration off an ageing legacy platform with zero downtime for a high-traffic store.
A catalog that size, with that much structured detail, breaks naive e-commerce in specific ways: search has to filter on dozens of technical attributes, shoppers need to compare similar products side by side, inventory has to stay accurate in real time, and none of it can get slower as thousands of people shop at once. The requirements were concrete:
- A 50,000+ product catalog with detailed, queryable technical specs
- Advanced search with multi-facet filters — brand, price, specifications
- Side-by-side comparison for similar products
- Real-time inventory synchronisation
- Native iOS and Android apps alongside the web store
- High performance under thousands of concurrent shoppers
What we did
We built an enterprise-grade platform engineered for performance and scale, with a web app and native mobile apps sharing one backend, and migrated off the old system in phases so the store never went dark.
Search that fits the catalog. We put Elasticsearch at the core of discovery, so full-text search and multi-facet filtering across dozens of technical attributes stay fast even on a 50,000+ product catalog — the single biggest lever on both conversion and the 60% drop in search time.
Phased, zero-downtime migration. Rather than a risky big-bang cutover, we migrated off the legacy platform in stages, running the new system alongside the old until each slice was proven — so a high-traffic store moved without losing a minute of selling time.
Built for comparison and decision-making. Side-by-side product comparison, wishlists and structured specs help shoppers choose confidently in a technical category where the details decide the sale.
Real-time inventory. Stock stays synchronised in real time across web and mobile, so customers don't order what isn't there.
Performance under load. A Redis caching layer and an AWS-based architecture keep the store responsive under thousands of concurrent shoppers.
Stack: Laravel, React, SwiftUI, Jetpack Compose, PostgreSQL, Elasticsearch, Redis and AWS.
The results
Sales grew 40% and search time dropped 60% on a catalog of 50,000+ products that stays fast under thousands of concurrent shoppers — and the migration completed without a single minute of downtime.
The bigger story is operational: one platform now serves web, iOS and Android from a single source of truth, inventory is accurate in real time, and a catalog that used to be hard to search is now the thing that converts. The phased, zero-downtime migration meant all of that landed without the revenue hit a hard cutover would have caused.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
How did B&H grow sales by 40% after the rebuild?
A rebuilt web and mobile commerce platform made the 50,000+ product catalog actually findable — search time dropped 60% — and a faster, cleaner purchase flow converted that discovery into orders.
How do you migrate a 50,000+ product catalog with zero downtime?
With a staged migration: continuous data synchronization between the old and new platform, feature-by-feature cutover and a progressive rollout — sales never stopped during the transition.
What does the platform include?
Web and mobile storefronts over a single catalog, fast product search tuned for a 50k+ inventory, and an ordering flow built for repeat buyers.
