Nelly replaced 17 years of custom infrastructure in six months. Here is how.

When Nelly decided to move away from its almost 17-year-old custom-built Backoffice and rebuild on a best-of-breed architecture, people in the industry said it could not be done quickly. Or at all. Too many systems. Too much custom-built logic.

Nelly said: Let’s go! And did it in six months.

But that was just the beginning. This is the story of how they did it and what Occtoo has made possible since then, told from the inside by the person who lived it. Adam Björk, Backend Developer at Nelly, has worked at Nelly for years and was one of the key people behind the shift.

The challenge: a custom-built Backoffice that had outgrown itself

Nelly had built something impressive over the years. A heavily customized Backoffice platform, deeply woven into how the business operated. Teams liked it. People said it could never be replaced.

But the business had changed. The shift to composable, best-of-breed commerce was underway, and the old Backoffice had to go. It was an unstable environment that carried too much risk.

Everything it did, the product data it held, the tools teams relied on, the integrations it powered, had to land somewhere new, fast, future-ready, and without disruption.

The solution: Occtoo as the spider in the web, handling all product data beyond the PIM

Occtoo became the product orchestration engine that sits between Nelly's systems and their data destinations. Fetching master product data (the master product — the single, unified view of all product data needed to make a product sellable across any channel) from wherever it lives and activating it to wherever it needs to go.

Before the team moved forward with the migration, Occtoo took on the full Backoffice data context. All of it. That foundation is what made the six-month timeline possible and what kept the business running smoothly throughout.

Adam Björk Nelly.com

Adam Björk, Backend-Developer at Nelly, describes it in a simple way:

"I see Occtoo as an integration engine that holds an updated state of the data, without being an expensive and complicated integration platform. You get a lot of infrastructure without doing a lot of work."

The practical examples tell the story best:

The EAN report. When an old server was shut down and Nelly suddenly had no database to query for EAN numbers needed in external brand sales reports, they did not build something new. They pointed everything at Occtoo, set up a destination, and kept the reports running exactly as before.

"We just redirected the data and plugged Occtoo in. It worked."

The article card. When Nelly needed a simple internal product card: a tool where staff could search for an item and instantly see prices, stock levels, and product descriptions. They set

it up in Occtoo. It took two minutes. A ready-made API, out of the box, no build required.

This pattern has repeated since then: E-com IDs. 30-day historical price tracking for price compliance. Each one a situation where the master product needs to be orchestrated and activated.

The result: a business that moves faster and builds smarter

The results of having Occtoo at the center are felt across the whole organization. For the tech team, new integrations and use cases that previously required months of work can now be enabled in days. Onboarding a new external data source, a returns solution, a size guide: anything is smooth and fast. The master product is always visible in its entirety, making it easy to troubleshoot, spot issues, and understand exactly what went wrong and why.

Product orchestration Nelly Occtoo

For merchandisers, Occtoo's segments make campaign management genuinely easy. Nelly runs multiple campaigns per week. With Occtoo, setting them up is fast, flexible, and reliable.

And for customers? They noticed nothing. Through one of the most significant platform transformations in the company's history, the experience stayed smooth. That is not luck. That is what the right foundation makes possible.

When asked whether he would recommend Occtoo to similar companies, Adam does not hesitate: "If you want to move toward best-of-breed, composable commerce, Occtoo fits really well. But even for a smaller use case: receiving new data, combining it, and sending it on. Occtoo works brilliantly.

What Occtoo delivered for Nelly

The connective layer that made a six-month composable migration possible
Full visibility and control of the master product across all systems
Fast onboarding of new integrations and data sources
Ready-made APIs out of the box. No large builds required
Smooth campaign management for a team running multiple campaigns per week
Zero customer disruption throughout the entire transformation

The brand new, best-of-breed architecture

The project includes revamping Nelly.com, NLYMan.com, and the mobile app. Brink Commerce forms the backbone of this new ecosystem. The tech stack includes Occtoo for product orchestration, a CMS from Contentful, Voyado Elevate for search and personalization, Akeneo for Product Information Management and several other leading components.

FAQ

How long does it take to replace a legacy ecommerce platform with a composable stack?

It depends on the complexity of the existing setup, but it can move faster than most organisations expect. Nelly replaced 17 years of custom-built infrastructure in six months with Occtoo at the centre of the new architecture. The key is having the right connective layer in place before the migration begins — one that can absorb the full data context of the old system and keep the business running without disruption.

What role does a Product Orchestration Engine play in a composable migration?

A Product Orchestration Engine acts as the connective layer between a company's data sources and its commerce destinations. In Nelly's case, Occtoo took on the full data context of the old Backoffice before the migration and continued running as the Master Product layer throughout. This is what made zero customer disruption possible — the product data was always available, always consistent, regardless of which underlying systems were changing.

How did Nelly avoid customer disruption during such a major platform change?

By ensuring the Master Product layer stayed stable throughout the migration. Occtoo held the complete, current state of all product data — prices, stock, descriptions, EAN numbers — while the underlying systems were swapped out. Teams kept running their reports, campaigns, and tools without interruption. Customers experienced nothing. That is what the right data foundation makes possible.

What is composable, best-of-breed commerce?

Composable commerce is an architectural approach where specialist tools — each best-in-class for its specific function — connect via APIs rather than relying on a single monolithic platform to do everything. Nelly's new stack includes Brink Commerce, Occtoo for product orchestration, Contentful as CMS, Voyado Elevate for search and personalisation, and Akeneo as PIM. Each component does what it does best. Occtoo sits between them as the Product Orchestration Engine, ensuring product data flows to every destination in real time.

What can teams do once a Product Orchestration Engine is in place?

New integrations and data use cases that previously required months of development can be enabled in days. Nelly's team described onboarding a new returns solution, a size guide, and external data sources as fast and smooth. Merchandisers can set up and run campaigns multiple times per week without IT involvement. And ready-made APIs mean there is no large build required for new product data use cases.