Independent Retailers Cooperative
A large-scale Drupal Commerce platform rebuild serving hundreds of independent retail stores, migrating from a legacy Drupal 7/Ubercart system to a modern Commerce 3 architecture with custom store management features.
The Challenge
A national nonprofit supporting independent retailers operated a Drupal 7/Ubercart platform that powered e-commerce websites for hundreds of member stores. The platform allowed each store to sell inventory through their own branded website with centralized catalog data and shared infrastructure.
The aging Drupal 7 codebase was approaching end of life, Ubercart lacked modern Commerce features, and the custom multi-store architecture needed to be completely rethought for Drupal 10 and Commerce 3. The migration involved not just upgrading the technology, but redesigning how hundreds of stores managed their products, orders, and customer data.
The Solution
Working as part of a distributed development team, we rebuilt the platform on Drupal 10 with Commerce 3. The new architecture replaced Ubercart's flat product model with Commerce's variation-based system, supporting multiple product formats, pricing tiers, and inventory tracking per store.
We developed custom store management tools that let individual retailers manage their catalog, process orders, and customize their storefront within the shared platform. The migration pipeline handled thousands of products, customer accounts, and order histories across all member stores, using Drupal's Migrate API with custom source and process plugins.
The team implemented automated testing and a CI/CD pipeline to ensure that changes to the shared platform didn't break individual store configurations.
The Results
Hundreds of independent retail stores were successfully migrated to the new platform with zero downtime. The modern Commerce 3 architecture unlocked features that weren't possible on Ubercart — advanced promotions, flexible product variations, and improved checkout flows. Store owners reported significantly improved admin usability, and the centralized platform continued to support the cooperative's mission of keeping independent retail competitive.
—The migration was the most complex technical project our organization had ever undertaken. The team handled it with professionalism and deep technical expertise, and our member stores came through the transition with a dramatically better platform.