Outgrown the Homegrown: A Framework for Enterprise Replatforming

For years, custom-built and homegrown platforms gave enterprise brands a sense of control. They promised flexibility but delivered fragility. Costly to maintain, fragile under scale, and slow to adapt, they have become anchors in a market that rewards speed, agility, and innovation.

That is why Avex, together with Shopify, created Outgrown the Homegrown: a replatforming framework built to help enterprise and high-growth merchants escape the noise of legacy platforms, follow a proven path to modernization, and retire outdated stacks in favor of technology designed for flexibility and scale.

Outgrown the Homegrown

Enterprise leaders know the stakes. Every day on a brittle custom stack is another day of lost revenue, wasted resources, and opportunities competitors are already capturing.

Replatforming, however, is not simple. It is a complex business transformation that involves multiple stakeholders, competing priorities, and high visibility at the executive level. That complexity is why many brands hesitate. The risk feels high, and the cost of getting it wrong feels even higher.

Outgrown the Homegrown was created to change the equation. Designed by Avex in partnership with Shopify, the framework de-risks replatforming by aligning business priorities, technology, and customer impact to deliver measurable results in under four months.

This campaign is not about telling brands to replatform. It is about showing why it matters, how to do it successfully, and what is possible when legacy systems are retired. It gives leaders clarity and confidence that modernization at enterprise scale is both achievable and transformative.

In the months ahead, Avex and Shopify will bring this framework to life through:

• Brand stories that show what is possible when fragile stacks are replaced with modern infrastructure

• Executive roundtables where peers share lessons from real-world transformations

• Playbooks and guides that align stakeholders and build trust in the process

• Diagnostic Assessments that evaluate the current state of your platform, uncover hidden costs and inefficiencies, and map the clearest path forward

Leaders know the cost of standing still. Outgrown the Homegrown provides the pathway to move forward with confidence.

Cancel the Noise

The biggest challenge with legacy platforms is not that they stop working. It is that they never stop demanding attention. Maintenance cycles eat up bandwidth. Vendor lock-in ties up capital. Integrations buckle under pressure. Codebases become so brittle that expansion feels impossible.

The result is a system that functions, but only at the expense of the people and resources propping it up.

This stage of the framework is about pinpointing the drag. It shows up in familiar patterns:

• Engineers hired to build the future spend their days patching the past.

• Budgets keep climbing, but margins and speed refuse to move.

• Projects stretch so long that market opportunities vanish before launch.

• Core systems operate in silos, leaving leaders with incomplete data and customers with broken experiences.

Canceling the noise is the first step in freeing enterprise brands from this cycle. Avex understands these challenges because we have solved them for enterprise leaders time and again. By moving brands onto Shopify, we help cancel the noise of legacy platforms and replace it with an infrastructure built for speed, scale, and customer trust. 

With Avex and Shopify, teams stop patching the past and start building the future.

Follow the Signal

When the noise is silenced, what remains is clarity. The signal is the proof that a better path already exists. It is not theory or aspiration;  it is the measurable results achieved by enterprise brands that have already made the move.

quip did it. Tru Earth did it. Thousands of enterprise leaders have done it. The results are consistent: faster launches, lower costs, stronger customer experiences, and the freedom to scale globally without friction on Shopify. 

And with Avex, they did it in less than 4 months. 

Retire the Stack 

In enterprise commerce, standing still is falling behind. Custom stacks built for yesterday’s challenges cannot support tomorrow’s opportunities. Every quarter spent on brittle infrastructure is another quarter competitors on Shopify scale further ahead.

Retiring the stack is not about risk. It is about results. Enterprises that make the move see:

• Up to 37% faster time-to-market with nimble rollouts

• Up to 36% lower total cost of ownership by eliminating technical debt

• Access to 10,000+ integrations that extend capability across every business function

• Enterprise-grade stability proven to thrive under peak traffic

• Freedom for marketing and product teams to launch without engineering bottlenecks

• Future-ready architecture that evolves alongside the business

Retiring the stack is not about dismissing the past. It is about recognizing its limits and moving forward with technology designed for the future. With Shopify as the foundation and Avex as the partner, retiring the stack becomes the most strategic move an enterprise can make to unlock agility, scale, and customer trust.

The Cost of Inaction

Enterprise commerce will not slow down for legacy systems. Every quarter spent maintaining a fragile custom stack adds cost, drains resources, and widens the gap between you and your competitors.

“Outgrown the Homegrown” turns that risk into action, offering diagnostic audits, proof points, and expert guidance to unlock agility, efficiency, and growth on Shopify.

If you are evaluating a replatform to Shopify, get in touch today.