Breaking up the monolith, one piece at a time.

A home-built solution that had started to slow things down

StickerApp sells stickers produced from the customer’s own design, created in an editor on the site, to both consumers and businesses, with the US as its largest market. Because few off-the-shelf systems fully support that business model, they have built most of their IT systems themselves. By 2023 that solution had started to become an obstacle to further growth: technical debt, disruptive bugs and uncertainty when developing new functionality. They brought us in as independent advisors to find the right way forward.

We started with the web

The web is the gateway into the other systems, so that is where we began. During 2024 we broke out the frontend code and implemented a new CMS, Storyblok, as an enabler for StickerApp to move faster. That shifted responsibility for creating pages from IT to marketing, with fewer intermediaries and a more efficient content process across all markets. We contributed ongoing technical and strategic advice, took the project manager role and reinforced the team with more developers to raise the pace.

Breaking up the monolith, piece by piece

In parallel we started several initiatives to gradually break out and improve parts of the complex system landscape, covering areas such as product information, production orders and the order system. A stepwise approach is necessary, and the domain knowledge held by StickerApp’s key people is invaluable when breaking up a home-built monolith that runs on different rules than a typical e-commerce setup. During 2024 we worked together on five projects, several of which continue into 2025. The one with the greatest impact is a rewrite of the entire checkout flow.

Want to read more? Read the full article about StickerApp on the blog (in Swedish).