The Challenge

Purdy & Figg ships across the UK and the US, where each market plays by its own rules. While the UK runs through a network of regional fulfillment partners, the US runs through one unified, dedicated partner. Fraud thresholds are also different in both markets. SKU eligibility and carrier selection are both different as well. Even the definition of a “shippable” order changes depending on where the customer lives.

For a while, the team held it together manually, but that approach has a ceiling, and Purdy & Figg hit it fast. A single slow API response from one partner could back up the entire order queue. There was no safe way to add a new region, partner, or business rule without risking the whole system. And when something goes wrong, even something small, the only way to find out was to dig through logs or the database.

The Solution

Purdy & Figg needed a system built to route orders intelligently, enforce increasingly specific rules, recover on its own when a provider stumbled, and expand into new markets without forking the codebase every time.

For this, we built a standalone fulfillment orchestration service, sitting between Shopify and every downstream logistics partner, that runs automatically without manual intervention.

It registers every order the moment it lands in Shopify, decides where that order should go, translates it into each partner’s native format, tracks it through to delivery, and writes the status back to Shopify.

A queue-first architecture

Instead of processing each order as one long synchronous chain, we split fulfillment into independent stages: tagging, routing, partner submission, status polling, and write-back, each running on its own queue.

If one provider slows down or goes offline, only its queue gets affected. Everything else keeps moving, and failed jobs retry automatically instead of quietly disappearing.

One codebase, many regions

Rather than maintaining a separate repo for each market, we built a region-based profile configuration layer that turns providers and rules on or off per deployment.

The UK runs a broader multi-partner setup, whereas the US runs a single fixed partner. That’s the same codebase, but independent deployments. When Purdy & Figg is ready for a new region, it becomes a configuration task rather than a full revamp.

Business logic that mirrors how the business actually works

Fraud checks, SKU eligibility, and routing rules were all kept strictly separate from the provider-specific integration code. So, updating one partner’s API requirement never risks the rules that decide whether an order should ship in the first place.

We built in the judgment calls the ops team used to make manually, like order-type rules for fraud and validation checks, and a cost-optimization layer that automatically balances order volume across partners to keep shipping costs in check.

Visibility for the whole team

We added a live operations dashboard so non-engineers can see queue depth, job status, and failures without touching a database or a log file, alongside health-check endpoints for uptime monitoring and zero-downtime deploys.

Every log line carries a correlation ID, so tracking one customer’s order from webhook to warehouse takes seconds, not a support escalation.

The Impact

Regional expansion is now something Purdy & Figg can plan on their roadmap, rather than something that requires a development sprint. A struggling provider no longer threatens order intake across the whole business. And the operations team can see, diagnose, and resolve issues themselves.

Looking Ahead

The region-profile pattern that powers the UK/US split was built with future markets and scalability in mind. This is where provider integrations, business rules, and routing logic are cleanly separated so we can add a new fulfillment partner or activate a new region just through configuration and testing.

Scaling into a new market shouldn’t mean rebuilding your fulfillment stack from scratch. If your DTC brand is hitting the same wall Purdy & Figg did, let’s talk about what a system like this could look like for your business.