The brand behind the jeans
Some brands just have a way of telling you exactly who they are. Gaudì does it in three items: a great pair of jeans, a top-tier sweatshirt, and an unstructured jacket. It's a clear, confident aesthetic – and it's been working for 35 years.
Merchant: Gaudì Fashion
Country: Italy, EU, UK
Industry: Fashion (B2C, Omnichannel)
Physical stores: 16 stores across Italy (e.g. Rome, Milan, Bolzano, Bari, Brescia, Catania, Florence)
Annual GMV: €55M overall – €1.4M online
Platform: Adobe Commerce + Hyvä Theme
Go-live: June 2022
Catalogue size: ~85,000 SKUs
Hyvä products: Hyvä Theme
Founded in Carpi by entrepreneur Stefano Bonacini, Gaudì has grown from a single vision into a fashion brand with 16 physical stores across Italy – from flagship locations in Rome, Milan, and Florence to neighbourhood stores across the country.
Gaudì has also understood digital commerce earlier than most. They've been selling online since 2007 using a custom e-commerce platform – a time when most fashion brands were still figuring out what an e-commerce website even was. That early commitment to digital has shaped how they think about their technology stack: seriously, strategically, and with a clear eye on long-term return.
The challenge: growing fast, without growing pains
They had a clear ambition from the very beginning: to build a genuinely seamless omnichannel experience. That meant:
- bringing their loyalty programme online,
- connecting customer data across touch points,
- making sure their digital presence could keep pace with the brand's physical retail energy.
The platform migration to Adobe Commerce Cloud addressed the foundations – improved performance, better response times, and the scalability to support a catalogue of roughly 85,000 SKUs. But as the team looked ahead to the next phase of growth, one thing became clear: the frontend wasn't where it needed to be.
Page speed, developer agility, and user experience were all areas with room to move. And in fashion, where campaign performance lives and dies on how fast a page loads and how good it looks, that room matters.
We needed to be sure to handle unexpected complexities and growth challenges. To reach the goal, we need a technology partner with a seamless approach across all levels of management within the group. Webgriffe not only met these expectations — it exceeded them, playing a key role in shaping the brand's digital evolution.
The solution: Hyvä as the performance foundation
In 2022, Gaudì made the move to Hyvä Theme and also integrated Adobe Live Search to further sharpen the shopping experience.
The decision was grounded in practical priorities. Hyvä offered a modern, streamlined approach to frontend development built on Tailwind CSS and Alpine.js: lightweight, fast to build with, and genuinely easier to maintain than the legacy stack.
For a brand managing a large SKU count and running regular campaigns, those qualities aren't nice-to-haves — they're essential.
Why Hyvä?
One honest note from the project: at the time of migration, some third-party extension compatibility with Hyvä was still catching up. Gaudì's advice to merchants considering the same path is straightforward — assess the technology landscape carefully, engage with the Hyvä community early, and consider a phased approach if needed. The ecosystem has matured considerably since 2022, but doing your homework upfront is always time well spent.
The results: faster, sharper, more revenue
The numbers tell a clear story. Since launching with Hyvä, Gaudì has seen page speed improve by 30%, conversion rate climb 10%, and revenue grow by 15%. Core Web Vitals — the metrics that matter most for both user experience and search rankings — improved significantly across all main pages.
Perhaps just as valuable: the speed at which the team can now move. Frontend development time has been cut by 50%, which means less time waiting for features and more time shipping them. For a brand that runs regular seasonal campaigns and needs to respond quickly to trends, that agility is a real competitive advantage.
The integration of Adobe Live Search has also sharpened the product discovery experience, important when your catalogue runs to 85,000 SKUs, and customers need to find what they're looking for quickly.
Our collaboration with Gaudì was highly successful due to their team's strong Adobe Commerce skills and the positive Hyvä development experience.
Hyvä's framework enabled us to deliver a fast, stable, and engaging online shopping experience. This partnership exemplifies the power of combining a skilled in-house team with an experienced agency and cutting-edge technology.
About Webgriffe
Based in Reggio Emilia – right in the heart of Italy's motor valley – Webgriffe helps brands do business online by building customised e-commerce ecosystems. Their work spans strategy, design, development, and web marketing, with a particular focus on omnichannel B2B and B2C solutions for brands that need something more than off-the-shelf.
Working with a mix of Agile methodology and deep digital expertise, Webgriffe takes a top-down approach that keeps projects ready to adapt — and keeps clients confident they're in good hands.
