ANIMATES CASE
How We Rescued a Failing Platform and Unleashed Its True Potential
IMPLEMENTED UNDER WHITE LABEL

the client
Animates (PetBarn) is a pet store chain in New Zealand that offers pet products, vet services, grooming, DIY dog washes and catteries. It is operated by Greencross, an Australian pet care company that also operates the Petbarn, City Farmers and Greencross Vets chains in Australia.

Objective: Rescue a Failing Platform & Stop the Bleeding.
The client's e-commerce store was a liability. Built on an unstable foundation with poor code quality, their platform was actively costing them money and putting their entire digital operation at risk. Our objective wasn't to "add features"; it was to execute a surgical rescue. We were brought in to perform a deep code quality audit, refactor the broken architecture, and transform their unstable, underperforming website into a reliable, high-performance asset ready for growth.

Tools and integrations

LS Central extends Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, a robust ERP hosted in the highly dependable and secure Microsoft Cloud, used for products, price, promotions, order and inventory sync.

An all-in-one ecommerce platform for marketplaces and channels like product information management (PIM) and an order management system (OMS). It helps businesses consolidate, manage and publish product data and manage orders with omnichannel commerce.

National postal service of New Zealand. It provides a range of services including mail delivery, parcel delivery, and courier services within New Zealand and internationally. It also offers a range of online tools and services to help customers manage their mail and parcels, including tracking, delivery updates, and address and postcode finders, as well as API which allows to utilize those features within the platform used by a merchant, such as customer address validation and delivery time forecast, used by us for implementing Same Day Delivery service.

Both ‘buy now, pay later’ payment services that allow customers to get products immediately and pay back over a scheduled period.

A division of PayPal and primarily deals in mobile and web payment systems for e-commerce companies.

Klarna is a global payments provider that offers direct payments, pay later options, and installment plans in a smooth one-click purchase experience.

A feature-packed loyalty and rewards program for organizations at all stages of growth. With bLoyal, businesses can get all the tools they need to maximize their customer’s lifetime value, including new ways to onboard new customers, new ways to promote their products, and engage with their customers in real-time.

Offers powerful on-site search, navigation, personalization and merchandising tailored to the specific needs of leading retailers. It helps retailers take control and focus on the customer experience.

A Postcode Finder and Address Finder for customers who occasionally need to look up address details. We’ve integrated it on checkout and my account pages.

Integration with Google Cloud app, via which a customer can manage his pets in my account (create, pick products, etc).

A company that provides marketing automation software and services to create and execute targeted digital marketing campaigns, as well as tools for customer relationship management, e-commerce, and analytics. Integrated to sync customers and orders data, which is used for further email marketing.

Nosto is an ecommerce personalization platform that uses machine learning and shopper behavioral data to create personalized shopping experiences. Their platform offers data-fueled personalization and merchandising solutions, including product recommendations, and category merchandising, which is exactly what was required by the client.

Advanced review system that collects, stores, and analyzes feedback data from a variety of sources in order to accurately determine customer needs for each individual product.

A product experience insights tool that gives behavior analytics and feedback data to help empathize with and understand customers. It provides tools like Heatmaps, Session Recordings, Surveys, and a Feedback widget to help connect the dots between what users do and why.

Online appointment cloud-based booking platform platform that integrates seamlessly with all popular veterinary practice management systems, including RX Works and VisionVPM, to offer safe, secure and encrypted online bookings.
Code Review & Audit: We Don't Just Find Problems. We Architect the Solution.
We inherited a codebase riddled with technical debt and a project adrift without a clear plan. Our first move was a deep-dive audit, not to just list the problems, but to architect a ruthlessly prioritized roadmap for recovery. We transformed their vague requirements into a bulletproof feature timeline, giving the client something they desperately needed: a clear, predictable, and guaranteed path to a successful launch.
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Repeat Delivery: We Built Them a Predictable Revenue Machine.
One-time sales are a hamster wheel. You start from zero every single month. We didn't just add a "subscription" button; we engineered a bulletproof, automated system for predictable, recurring revenue. We completely refactored their payment processing to handle thousands of recurring transactions with flawless reliability. We then built a powerful admin command center, giving the merchant complete control to manage and scale their new money machine. This wasn't a feature; it was a fundamental shift in their business model.
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Same Day Delivery: We Turned a Logistical Nightmare into Their Biggest Sales Weapon.
In the age of Amazon, "wait and see" is a death sentence for e-commerce. The single biggest question in any online purchase is "When will I get it?" Most websites make you wait until the final step of checkout to answer it. That's insane. We didn't just add a shipping option; we engineered a "Certainty Engine" right on the product page. By integrating directly with the NZ Post API and implementing bulletproof address validation, we gave customers an instant, guaranteed answer. This wasn't just a feature; it was a fundamental re-engineering of the sales process designed to kill cart abandonment and close the sale on the spot.
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Migration from Open Source to Cloud: We Replaced Their Broken Foundation.
The client was trying to build an empire on a crumbling foundation. Their old platform couldn't scale for the holidays and was so riddled with technical debt that any new feature was a high-risk bet. We didn't just migrate them; we performed a foundational overhaul. By ruthlessly refactoring over 70% of the "bad code" during the migration, we didn't just move them to the cloud; we gave them a rock-solid, high-performance architecture. This wasn't an update; it was the strategic move that finally unlocked their ability to scale and innovate without fear.
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Upgrade to 2.4.5: We Didn't Just Update. We Unleashed Their Business.
The client's legacy code was a cage, trapping their business potential and making every new feature a slow, expensive, and risky endeavor. This final upgrade wasn't just about "polishing" the last few parts; it was about breaking the locks. By eradicating the final remnants of their technical debt and modernizing their entire server stack, we handed them the keys to a platform that is no longer a drag on their resources. The merchant is now free to invest their capital in ambitious growth and new features, knowing their foundation is rock-solid and built for speed.
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Enterprise Cloud server architecture and release management
We’ve used 3 different environments to be able to keep the project’s ongoing support and develop additional features at the same time:
- Integration - for integration development and testing
- Staging 1 - for ongoing support
- Staging 2 - for feature development
To keep the code organized we’ve used a release management system that allowed us to allocate features according to the urgency and complexity of implementation.
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