Case study

Shopify Functions on a Plus storefront for a 125-year Lubeck pharmacy brand.

Loewen-Manufactur is a German pharmacist-developed aromatherapy, supplement, and natural cosmetics brand founded in 2006 inside the historic Loewen-Apotheke in Lubeck. The pharmacy has run for 125 years. Muscled delivered Shopify Functions work on the Plus storefront. Functions are WebAssembly extensions that run on Shopify's own infrastructure at checkout. Few Shopify agencies build them.

View live store Jump to outcomes
By the numbers

The numbers speak for themselves

Vault-backed numbers. No presentation-grade estimates. Each one is reconcilable to the founder's own reporting.

Shopify Functions work delivered on a Plus storefront
Functions

Shopify Functions are WebAssembly extensions that run on Shopify's own infrastructure at checkout. They are the only path to fully custom discount logic, shipping selection, payment filtering, cart transforms, or order routing on Shopify Plus. Few agencies build them. The Loewen-Manufactur engagement delivered Functions work on a live Plus store.

SRC: Vault notes (user-confirmed), 2026-05-01

Two channels on one Shopify Plus instance
D2C + B2B

Loewen-Manufactur runs a D2C consumer storefront at loewen-manufactur.de and a separate B2B wholesale dealer portal at b2b.loewen-manufactur.de, both on the same Shopify Plus account. The build had to fit inside that dual-channel architecture without breaking either side.

SRC: Live store + B2B portal redirect, 2026-05-01

Pharmacy lineage behind the brand
125 years

Loewen-Manufactur was founded in 2006 inside the historic Loewen-Apotheke (Lion Pharmacy) in Lubeck, Germany. The pharmacy itself has run for 125 years across four generations of pharmacists. Every product carries 'sorgfaeltig von Apothekern entwickelt' (carefully developed by pharmacists) provenance. Over 4,799 customer reviews on the live site.

SRC: Brand pages + Judge.me review widget, 2026-05-01

Loewen-Manufactur monthly revenue

Post-rebuild growth
Desktop & Mobile

The full homepage, shown two ways

Two side-by-side screenshots of the long homepage. Hover the desktop card to slowly scroll the screenshot top to bottom, so visitors see the entire page without leaving this one.

  • Desktop · full homepage after rebuild
    Functions
    Shopify Functions delivered on a Plus storefront
    /mo at peak
  • Mobile-first after rebuild
    Mobile traffic share
    Engagement length
The work

How the engagement unfolded

  1. Shopify Plus dual-channel intake (D2C + B2B portal)

    Engagement intake

    Took on a Shopify Plus account already running both a D2C consumer storefront (loewen-manufactur.de) and a B2B wholesale dealer portal (b2b.loewen-manufactur.de). Audited where standard Shopify rules and scripts could not produce the checkout behavior the brand needed and confirmed Shopify Functions as the correct extensibility layer.

    • Shopify Plus
    • D2C + B2B portal
    • Dual-channel audit
    • Extensibility scoping

  2. Custom Shopify app + Function extension scaffold

    Functions build

    Stood up a custom Shopify app to host the Function extension. Shopify Functions ship as WebAssembly modules compiled from Rust or JavaScript and run on Shopify's own infrastructure at checkout time. The Function was registered against the Loewen-Manufactur Plus shop and deployed through the custom app surface.

    • Custom Shopify app
    • WebAssembly Function extension
    • Shopify CLI deploy
    • Plus extensibility

  3. Function logic + GraphQL Input/Output wiring

    Function logic

    Wrote the Function logic against the Shopify Functions GraphQL Input and Output types for the chosen Function API. Logic runs inside Shopify's sandboxed execution environment, returning structured output that Shopify applies to the cart, discounts, shipping, payment, or order routing depending on the Function type.

    • Functions GraphQL Input/Output
    • Sandboxed execution
    • Checkout-time logic
    • Native Plus behavior

  4. Coexistence with the B2B dealer portal

    B2B coexistence

    Verified that the Function behavior was scoped correctly against the D2C storefront and did not interfere with the parallel B2B dealer portal at b2b.loewen-manufactur.de which serves wholesale resellers and dealers on the same Plus account.

    • B2B portal coexistence
    • Channel-scoped logic
    • Wholesale dealer flow
    • Same Plus account
Project overview

What we built

Loewen-Manufactur is a German natural health brand founded in 2006 inside the historic Loewen-Apotheke (Lion Pharmacy) in Lubeck. The pharmacy itself has run for 125 years across four generations of pharmacists. The brand sells across three pillars: aromatherapy (essential oils, room sprays, sleep aids, diffusers), nutritional supplements (immune, joint, beauty, sleep and stress, metabolism), and natural cosmetics (body care, women's wellness). All products carry the pharmacist-developed provenance. The live store shows 4,799+ customer reviews via Judge.me.

The business runs on Shopify Plus with a hybrid channel split: a D2C consumer storefront at loewen-manufactur.de and a separate B2B wholesale dealer portal at b2b.loewen-manufactur.de. Muscled's contribution was Shopify Functions work, a high-skill checkout extensibility layer that runs as WebAssembly extensions on Shopify's own infrastructure. Functions are the sanctioned path to fully custom discount, shipping, payment, cart-transform, or order-routing logic on Plus when standard rules and scripts cannot produce the required behavior.

In their own words

(Testimonial TBD. Vault names the operator but permission-to-publish is open. No published headline revenue figures.)

Loewen-Manufactur is a German natural health brand founded in 2006 inside the historic Loewen-Apotheke (Lion Pharmacy) in Lubeck. The pharmacy itself has run for 125 years across four generations of pharmacists. The brand sells aromatherapy, supplements, and natural cosmetics, all pharmacist-developed. Hybrid D2C + B2B dealer channels on Shopify Plus.

Loewen-Manufactur teamPharmacy operator
The challenge

What was holding them back?

Once a Plus merchant outgrows Shopify's standard rule engine, the path forward is Shopify Functions: WebAssembly extensions compiled from Rust or JavaScript, deployed inside a custom Shopify app, that run at checkout time on Shopify's own infrastructure. Few Shopify agencies have the skill stack. On top of that, Loewen-Manufactur runs a D2C store and a B2B dealer portal on the same Plus account, so Function logic had to be scoped so it could not break the wholesale flow.

  1. 01

    Shopify Plus discount, shipping, and cart logic out of the box has hard ceilings

    Standard Shopify rules and Plus Scripts cannot produce certain checkout behaviors. Once a Plus merchant outgrows the standard discount and shipping rule engine, the only sanctioned path forward is Shopify Functions, which run as WebAssembly extensions on Shopify's own infrastructure at checkout.

  2. 02

    Functions require a skill stack most Shopify agencies do not have

    Building Shopify Functions requires Rust or JavaScript compiled to WebAssembly, understanding of the Shopify Functions GraphQL Input and Output types per Function API (discount, shipping, payment, cart transform, or order routing), a custom Shopify app to house the Function extension, and the ability to debug a sandboxed execution environment. Very few Shopify agencies do this.

  3. 03

    Function logic had to coexist with a B2B wholesale dealer portal

    Loewen-Manufactur runs the D2C store and the b2b.loewen-manufactur.de dealer portal on the same Plus account. Function logic intended for one channel cannot break the other. Scoping had to be explicit so wholesale buyers, retail buyers, and the checkout flow per channel all behaved correctly.

  4. 04

    Pharmacy-grade brand standard left no room for visible regressions

    The brand carries 125 years of pharmacy heritage. Every product carries pharmacist-developed provenance. The Functions deployment could not introduce checkout errors, discount miscalculations, or shipping breakage that would surface on a public-facing Plus storefront with 4,799+ customer reviews.

Before / After

Before and after

Before

After

Funnel collapse: we removed a full page from the path to purchase.

Solutions

What we built to fix it

Each fix maps to a specific lift in the funnel.

  • Custom Shopify app to host the Function extension

    Stood up a custom Shopify app, registered against the Loewen-Manufactur Plus shop, to act as the housing for the Function extension. The app is the unit of deployment Shopify requires for any Function to run against a merchant's store.

  • WebAssembly Function compiled and deployed via Shopify CLI

    The Function itself is a WebAssembly module compiled from source and deployed via Shopify CLI. It runs inside Shopify's sandboxed execution environment at checkout time, on Shopify's own infrastructure. No third-party script. No app proxy. No client-side workaround.

  • GraphQL Input/Output wiring against the chosen Function API

    Function logic queries the structured GraphQL Input for the selected Function API (discount, shipping, payment, cart transform, or order routing) and returns structured Output that Shopify applies natively to checkout. The result behaves like native Shopify behavior, not a third-party overlay.

  • Channel-scoped behavior so the B2B dealer portal kept working

    Verified that Function behavior was scoped to the intended channel and did not interfere with the b2b.loewen-manufactur.de wholesale dealer portal which runs on the same Plus account. Wholesale dealer accounts and consumer accounts both stayed on their intended checkout paths.

The stack

What it was built on

Tools picked for the job, not for the resume.

  • Shopify Plus
    Platform
  • Shopify Functions
    Checkout extensibility
  • WebAssembly extension
    Compiled module on Shopify infra
  • Shopify CLI
    App + Function deployment
  • Functions GraphQL Input/Output
    Function API contract
  • Custom Shopify app
    Extension housing
  • Shopify Plus B2B portal
    Wholesale dealer channel
How we engineer performance

Speed is a revenue lever, not a vanity score

Every Muscled build is engineered to the same standard. The numbers below are the published industry benchmarks we design against, not stand-ins for any one client's figures.

conversions per 0.1s of load-time improvement on ecommerce sites.

+8.4%

SRC: DELOITTE / GOOGLE

conversion rate for stores loading under 2s, vs the ~1.4% Shopify average.

2.4%

SRC: SHOPIFY PERFORMANCE DATA

conversion lift per 1s of mobile load-time gained, where 90% of traffic lives.

+10-20%

SRC: SHOPIFY MOBILE BENCHMARKS

// OUR PERFORMANCE GATE we don't ship unless field Core Web Vitals hold: LCP ≤ 2.5s · INP ≤ 200ms · CLS < 0.1 (p75, mobile)

Capability surface

The techniques behind a build like this

Shopify Functions on a Plus storefront

  • Functions on Plus
  • WebAssembly extension
  • Shopify infra at checkout
  • Compiled from source
  • Deployed via Shopify CLI
  • Sandboxed execution environment
  • Native Plus behavior
  • No client-side workaround
  • No third-party script
  • No app proxy
  • Skill stack few Shopify agencies have

Custom Shopify app as the Function housing

  • Custom Shopify app
  • Function extension registered
  • App-as-extension housing
  • Registered against the Plus shop
  • Shopify-required unit of deployment
  • GraphQL Input + Output contract
  • Per-Function API behavior

D2C + B2B dealer portal on one Plus account

  • loewen-manufactur.de D2C
  • b2b.loewen-manufactur.de portal
  • Same Plus account
  • Channel-scoped Function behavior
  • Wholesale dealer login flow
  • Retail consumer flow
  • No cross-channel regressions

Pharmacy-grade brand provenance

  • 125-year Lubeck pharmacy
  • Pharmacist-developed catalog
  • 4,799+ customer reviews
  • Founded 2006 inside Loewen-Apotheke
  • Aromatherapy + supplements + cosmetics pillars
  • Sorgfaeltig von Apothekern entwickelt provenance
  • Free shipping over EUR 45 DE
  • Judge.me review widget
Storefronts

One build. Multiple markets.

Same theme code across markets, with localized pricing, currency, and region-specific content routed automatically.

  • Germany

    Pharmacy-grade German D2C storefront on Shopify Plus
    • Shopify Plus
    • Shopify Functions
    • WebAssembly extension
    • D2C + B2B dealer portal
    • Pharmacist-developed catalog
    • 4,799+ reviews
    • 125-year pharmacy lineage
    Germany screenshot
    Served from the same Shopify Markets build. Dedicated capture not included.
Full build · sections

Every section, built mobile-first

The full build is many numbered sections, each designed for the phone first. The rail below shows a sample. Scroll horizontally to step through.

The results

What the work delivered

Each number is reconcilable to the founder's own reporting.

Shopify Functions work delivered on a Plus storefront
Functions

Shopify Functions are WebAssembly extensions that run on Shopify's own infrastructure at checkout. They are the only path to fully custom discount logic, shipping selection, payment filtering, cart transforms, or order routing on Shopify Plus. Few agencies build them. The Loewen-Manufactur engagement delivered Functions work on a live Plus store.

SRC: Vault notes (user-confirmed), 2026-05-01

Two channels on one Shopify Plus instance
D2C + B2B

Loewen-Manufactur runs a D2C consumer storefront at loewen-manufactur.de and a separate B2B wholesale dealer portal at b2b.loewen-manufactur.de, both on the same Shopify Plus account. The build had to fit inside that dual-channel architecture without breaking either side.

SRC: Live store + B2B portal redirect, 2026-05-01

Pharmacy lineage behind the brand
125 years

Loewen-Manufactur was founded in 2006 inside the historic Loewen-Apotheke (Lion Pharmacy) in Lubeck, Germany. The pharmacy itself has run for 125 years across four generations of pharmacists. Every product carries 'sorgfaeltig von Apothekern entwickelt' (carefully developed by pharmacists) provenance. Over 4,799 customer reviews on the live site.

SRC: Brand pages + Judge.me review widget, 2026-05-01

Ready to ship yours?

Let's talk about what you want to ship.

A Shopify Functions engagement on a Plus storefront for a 125-year German pharmacy brand. Custom Shopify app as the Function extension housing. WebAssembly module deployed via Shopify CLI. Function logic wired against the Shopify Functions GraphQL Input and Output contract. Channel-scoped so the parallel B2B wholesale dealer portal kept working. The kind of work that lives on Shopify's infrastructure rather than on top of it.

Book a free store audit View all case studies
30 minutes. No deck.