Iggy is a design-led Shopify agency in Stockholm working with Nordic fashion, beauty and lifestyle brands. Its team of 18 is strong in brand, UX and strategy, but it had only three in-house developers. As clients moved from standard Shopify themes to faster headless storefronts, the agency was turning away work because it couldn't hire experienced Hydrogen developers quickly enough in Stockholm.

• 01

  Lost projects.

  The agency declined two large projects in one quarter due to lack of developers.

• 02

  Hard to hire.

  Senior headless Shopify developers were scarce and expensive locally.

• 03

  Brand consistency.

  Any outside team had to work invisibly under the agency's brand and standards.

• 04

  Time zones.

  Developers needed enough overlap with Stockholm for daily collaboration.

We set up a dedicated team of four (a tech lead, two frontend developers and a QA engineer) who work as part of the agency. The team joins the agency's Slack, Jira and stand-ups, follows its code standards and design system, and attends client calls under the agency's name when needed. We built a shared Hydrogen starter kit with the agency, covering components, CMS setup and performance defaults, which cut setup time on every new project. The agency's own developers now focus on architecture and client relationships while our team handles delivery.

• Headless storefronts

  Six Hydrogen storefronts for fashion and lifestyle brands.

• Shared starter kit

  Reusable components, CMS models and performance settings.

• CMS integration

  Storyblok set up so brand teams edit pages without developers.

• Quality process

  Automated tests, accessibility checks and performance budgets on every release.

1. 1

   Working invisibly

   We adopted the agency's tools, standards and communication style from day one.

2. 2

   Time overlap

   The team works a shifted day with four hours of daily overlap with Stockholm.

3. 3

   Knowledge retention

   Everything is documented in the agency's wiki, so no knowledge is locked in our team.

1. Week 1

   01 Match

   Selected developers with Hydrogen experience, interviewed by the agency.

2. Weeks 2–3

   02 Onboard

   Joined tools, learned standards and shipped a first small project.

3. Weeks 4–6

   03 Build the kit

   Created the shared starter kit with the agency's lead developer.

4. Month 2 onward

   04 Deliver

   Ongoing sprints across client projects with monthly reviews.

The agency doubled its delivery capacity without adding permanent headcount and stopped turning away headless projects. End clients saw faster stores and higher mobile conversion, and the agency now pitches headless builds as a core offer.