BODi, the health and fitness company formerly known as Beachbody, is behind well-known in-home fitness programmes such as P90X, 21 Day Fix and 80 Day Obsession, and sells nutritional products alongside digital streaming subscriptions. After retiring its multi-level marketing model and moving to direct-to-consumer, the company needed to free its engineers from maintaining a custom commerce stack so they could focus on its streaming platform and consumer app.
In under eight months of focused build, BODi replatformed from a fully headless custom stack on Commercetools to Shopify Plus across US, UK and Canadian storefronts. The migration moved more than 1 million stored payment methods at a 99.5% average success rate and more than 800,000 active subscriptions at a 99.9% success rate. Checkout conversion rose 10 percentage points at launch, and four to five engineers were freed for other priorities.
About BODi
BODi has a 24-year catalogue of in-home fitness programmes and a range of nutritional products. The company rebranded from Beachbody to BODi in 2022 as it moved away from multi-level marketing toward a direct-to-consumer model for digital subscriptions and physical nutrition products. It operates regional storefronts for the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada. Many of its customers have been with the brand for a long time, and some subscriptions in its system had been on file for more than 15 years, which made continuity of service during any platform change a critical concern.
The Challenge
BODi's legacy commerce platform was a custom, fully headless stack built to serve the old multi-level marketing model. Maintaining it consumed significant engineering capacity: around five engineers, and up to eight across commerce and merchandising. The business wanted to redirect that talent toward a digital streaming platform, a consumer app and a long-postponed website consolidation, but could not do so while the commerce stack demanded constant attention.
The migration itself carried unusual risk. BODi had to move more than 1 million stored payment credentials and roughly 818,000 active subscriptions across three countries, spanning both digital streaming and physical nutrition products. Losing even a small percentage would have meant interrupted service and lost revenue. The data also needed work: more than 1,000 legacy SKUs had to be standardised and around 1,000 customer addresses fixed manually before migration. Leadership was clear that it did not want to lose any subscriptions in the process.
- A custom headless commerce stack, built for a retired MLM model, absorbing five to eight engineers
- Over 1 million stored payment credentials to migrate across US, UK and Canada
- Around 818,000 active subscriptions, some on file for more than 15 years
- More than 1,000 legacy SKUs to standardise and about 1,000 addresses to correct
- A strategic need to redirect engineering to streaming, app and website consolidation
The Solution
After a vendor evaluation, BODi chose Shopify Plus as an opinionated, well-tested platform whose ecosystem could replace much of its custom code. An ROI model built with Shopify secured finance approval. BODi delivered the project in-house with Shopify Professional Services rather than a system integrator, and leadership adopted a guiding principle that the platform's conventions were the best practice, avoiding custom builds wherever possible. The team even simplified, removing a payment method rather than adding new features.
Shopify Plus storefronts
Three regional storefronts for the US, UK and Canada run on Shopify Plus. Standardised product page paths fixed a navigation issue that had made it harder for shoppers to return to product pages from the cart.
Subscriptions with Recharge
Recharge manages subscriptions for both digital streaming and physical nutrition products. More than 800,000 subscriptions were migrated into it with a 99.9% success rate, and overnight subscription processing is now faster, so the warehouse can start fulfilling orders earlier.
Payments and checkout
Shop Pay supports a faster checkout, while Cybersource and Stripe continue to process payments alongside Recharge and Shopify. The live payment migration across these providers was a dedicated workstream.
Returns, tax and promotions
Loop handles returns, Avalara calculates sales tax and Rebuy powers promotions and add-on offers, replacing functionality that previously required custom development.
Implementation Journey
The project began with a five-day on-site discovery and ran for under eight months of focused build. Three workstreams ran in parallel, supported by more than 150 solutioning efforts and 24 merchant enablement workshops. The subscription and payment migration took four to five months because of the legacy payment gateway, compared with about three weeks for a typical migration. Bulk migrations moved 822,000 US cards, 110,000 Canadian cards and 8,500 UK cards at success rates between 99.5% and 99.9%, followed by a launch-day delta migration. Launch took place on a Monday night: the team had blocked six hours and finished in four. Two weeks of hypercare followed with zero escalations, and by Thursday the team was already planning a fast-follow release.
The Results
The replatform delivered both commercial and organisational gains. Checkout conversion rose 10 percentage points at launch, with further improvement after Shop Pay was enabled. Engineering capacity was transformed: two to three engineers now maintain Shopify at about 50% of their time, freeing four to five engineers for digital streaming and app work. Affiliate integrations, payment providers and merchandising changes now ship in days or weeks. The P90X nutritional line launched alongside the new site, with nine SKUs across five products going live in a single day. Lab tests also showed the homepage loading 25% faster than on the previous platform.
- More than 1 million payment methods migrated at a 99.5% average success rate
- More than 800,000 subscriptions migrated at a 99.9% success rate
- Checkout conversion up 10 percentage points at launch
- Four to five engineers freed from commerce maintenance
- Zero escalations during two weeks of hypercare
- Homepage 25% faster and collection and product pages 14% faster in lab tests
Key Takeaways for Growing Businesses
Follow the platform's conventions
BODi's decision to treat platform conventions as best practice, and to avoid adding features during migration, kept scope under control. Growing businesses can reduce risk by resisting the urge to rebuild every legacy customisation.
Treat data and payments as their own project
The payment and subscription migration took months and was run as a dedicated workstream. Any business with recurring revenue should plan and test this element separately and early.
Measure success in freed capacity
The biggest win was not only conversion but engineers redeployed to strategic products. When evaluating a replatform, count the ongoing maintenance effort you will get back.
Technology Stack
Shopify Plus, Shop Pay, Recharge, Loop, Avalara, Rebuy, Cybersource, Stripe, Shopify Sidekick
This story is compiled by the ONEXT DIGITAL editorial team from public sources and is shared as an industry reference. BODi is not an ONEXT DIGITAL client.
Sources: https://www.shopify.com/case-studies/bodi