Atica — Empowering Nail Professionals with Premium Materials and Innovation

We delivered both platforms across four phases over 3–4 months. Atica's team handled brand direction, product content, and the operational rollout of the Salou hub; our team built and shipped both Magento 2 stores in parallel.

Phase 1 — Discovery, Architecture & Design (Month 1)

The strategic decision in Phase 1 set the architecture for everything else: two independent Magento installations, not one multi-store Magento.

Why separate stores rather than a single multi-store setup:

• Different domains, different markets, different SEO strategies — atica.com.ua targets Ukrainian search; aticaspain.es targets Spanish and EU search. Two domains rank better than one domain with subdirectories

• Different operational realities — Ukrainian fulfillment ships from Zaporizhzhia with Nova Poshta; Spanish fulfillment ships from Salou with EU carriers. Mixing these in one Magento creates more operational complexity than it removes

• Different payment stacks — LiqPay-style flows for Ukrainian buyers, Stripe for EU. Different VAT regimes (Ukrainian VAT vs. Spanish IVA). Single Magento can do this, but maintenance overhead grows fast

• Different content tones — the Ukrainian store speaks to known customers in a mature market. The Spanish store speaks to new buyers in a market where Atica is unknown — different copy, different trust signals, different content priorities

• Independent risk — if one store needs maintenance, the other keeps selling. Important for a cross-border operation where downtime hits revenue from two markets at once

Design work happened in parallel for both stores. Both use Martfury as the base theme, customized separately for each market — same product photography conventions (consistent brand expression), different navigation patterns, different homepage hero treatments, different trust signal placement.

Phase 2 — Ukrainian Store Migration (Magento 1 → Magento 2) (Month 2)

The Ukrainian store moved from Magento 1 to a fresh Magento 2 install on the existing atica.com.ua domain.

Migration scope:

• Product migration — full catalog including proprietary product lines (Polymix polygels, Cat's Eye gel polish collections, Twilight collection, Atica Satin, eXel builder gels, STRONG gel system, Soft Base, builder bases, top coats, polygels, gel powders, brushes, accessories) with attributes, categories, and inventory state preserved

• Customer migration — B2C consumer accounts, B2B nail-technician accounts, wholesale/collaborator relationships preserved

• Order history migration — full operational history retained

• Trilingual content migration — Ukrainian, Russian, and English content preserved across the new store

• URL preservation + 301 redirect map — every Magento 1 URL mapped to its Magento 2 equivalent, protecting years of SEO equity built around Ukrainian nail-supply search traffic

• Pricing in hryvnia — Ukrainian payment methods, Nova Poshta integration for shipping, free shipping threshold (₴2,500), Zaporizhzhia pickup option

The Ukrainian launch shipped with full data preservation, SEO equity intact, and zero loss of operational continuity.

Phase 3 — Spanish Store Greenfield Build (Months 2–3, in parallel)

While the Ukrainian migration ran, a separate team thread built the Spanish store from scratch.

This wasn't translation work. It was a market-entry build:

• Spanish-first product taxonomy — categories named in Spanish (Esmaltes en gel, Bases y top coats, Poligeles PolyMix, Sistema de gel, Polvo en gel, Geles de color, Pinceles, Accesorios, Cuidado de uñas, Equipamiento), with product naming conventions Spanish nail technicians actually search for

• Spanish copywriting — homepage hero, category descriptions, product descriptions, trust signals, About page — all written natively for the Spanish market, not machine-translated from Ukrainian

• Spanish keyword strategy — "comprar esmaltes en gel", "geles para uñas profesionales", "manicura Salou", "esmalte semipermanente España" and the long tail Spanish nail technicians search for

• Pricing in euros — €50 free shipping threshold, EU consumer pricing conventions

• Salou pickup option — surfaced clearly for local Catalan and tourist buyers

• Spanish wholesale pathway — "¡Venta al por mayor y colaboración!" CTA in header, mirroring the Ukrainian B2B model but adapted for Spanish trade practices

• Spanish customer service infrastructure — contact forms, Spanish-language email flows, Spanish phone numbers (with Ukrainian backup line for cross-border B2B inquiries)

Technical stack:

• Magento 2 with the same production foundation as the Ukrainian store — PHP 8.x, MariaDB, OpenSearch, Varnish, Redis

• Martfury theme customized separately for the Spanish brand expression

• Stripe payment integration — chosen as the modern EU-friendly card processor, with B2B-friendly developer experience for the wholesale customer base

• Spanish VAT engine — IVA configured for mainland Spain, with awareness of the differential tax treatment in the Canary Islands (IGIC) and Balearic Islands for accurate B2B cross-EU invoicing

• Multi-region delivery logic — shipping rules and rate calculation by destination, with Salou pickup as a no-cost option for local buyers

• EU shipping carriers integrated for cross-border delivery

Phase 4 — Catalog Sync, Testing & Dual Launch (Month 4)

The final month covered the part that makes cross-border eCommerce actually work — keeping two independent stores in product-reality sync while they operate independently.

Product reality sync:

• Same proprietary SKUs available on both stores

• Inventory awareness — the Spanish hub stocks the Spanish-market subset, the Ukrainian warehouse stocks the broader Ukrainian-market range

• Pricing managed independently per market, by market team, with no forced parity

• Product imagery shared between stores for visual consistency

Both stores went through cross-browser testing, mobile QA, payment flow validation in production environments, and performance tuning before launch. The Ukrainian migration and the Spanish greenfield went live as a coordinated pair — Atica had two production stores serving two markets, in under four months.

This was a delivered project — Atica took over both platforms after launch and continues operating them today. We're not currently engaged in ongoing development, but the dual-store foundation we shipped is the foundation they're still running.