The Music Room
The Music Room unlocks scalable growth and streamlines trade-in sales with Shopify Plus
Industry: Audio Equipment
Services: Migration, Custom Development
When a legacy platform slowed innovation, The Music Room replatformed to Shopify Plus to power its hybrid model—certified used HiFi gear, trade-ins, and DTC growth—with speed, automation, and scale. The new Shopify Plus store is scheduled to go live in July.
The Music Room has long served as a trusted guide for audiophiles around the world—specializing in high-quality pre-owned HiFi gear, expert advice, and a smooth, customer-first experience. But its growth ambitions were increasingly constrained by legacy ecommerce infrastructure.
Built on BigCommerce, the company faced serious roadblocks: from clunky site management and slow page deployment to limited reporting capabilities and tight constraints on design evolution. For a business driven by innovation and personalization, the tech simply wasn’t keeping up.
To scale operations, simplify workflows, and fully support their mission to connect people with the power of music, The Music Room partnered with MTN Haus to replatform to Shopify Plus and deliver a commerce foundation aligned with their unique DTC model—including certified used product sales and a robust trade-in program.
“We had built so many weird little things into BigCommerce that it became a pseudo ERP. At that point, we really couldn’t do much with it… Shopify ticked all the boxes.”
— George Phoenix, CTO
The Challenge: Scaling a Unique Sales Model on Legacy Tech
The Music Room’s ecommerce site had strong potential, but BigCommerce’s rigidity made content updates, merchandising, and operational scaling difficult—ultimately hindering growth and limiting the customer experience. Balancing certified pre-owned and new product sales, The Music Room needed a platform that supported real-time merchandising, flexible content creation, and streamlined trade-in operations. BigCommerce made those workflows possible—but slow, manual, and difficult to scale..
Specific challenges included:
- Limited CMS flexibility: Marketing and merchandising teams couldn’t build or update landing pages without heavy dev lift.
- Weak reporting: Native analytics and performance insights were far below business needs.
- Operational friction: Manual admin slowed down trade-in flows, offer reviews, and content scaling.
- Rigid design and UX: Making even simple changes to site structure or layout was cumbersome.
- Integration gaps: NetSuite ERP, tax, and shipping tools required additional workaround layers.
“I'm just adding something like a new page is difficult and it's hard to do to make it even look good. And so moving to Shopify can allow us to spin up pages. Quickly use drag and drop features and basically make something look good and less than an hour and have at least something up.
— Michael Schmidgall, Ecommerce Manager
The Solution: Shopify Plus Tailored for the Audiophile Journey
MTN Haus led discovery, technical architecture, and Shopify Plus implementation—an effort the Music Room team described as both "liberating and energizing" after years of working around platform constraints. With a focus on operational flexibility and unique feature sets, this wasn’t a redesign. It was a replatform to power a hybrid sales model—certified used and new HiFi gear—with the speed, automation, and control needed to grow globally.
Together, we mapped key workflows and architected Shopify to support:
Certified Used Product Sales
- Unique product detail pages for each used item with serialized tracking
- Custom price logic to distinguish used vs. factory authorized gear
- Dedicated filtering and merchandising via Searchspring to showcase used inventory
Trade-In & Sell-Your-Gear Programs
- “Get Your Offer”: Users can quickly submit gear info and receive an offer within 48 hours
- Cash or Trade: Options for instant payouts or store credit toward new equipment
- Managed Workflow: Internal tracking tools and admin support for fast item intake and offer resolution
ERP and Core Systems Integration
- NetSuite ERP: Syncs order, inventory, and customer data in real-time
- ShipperHQ: Advanced shipping rules for fragile and high-value items
- Vertex: Tax automation aligned with U.S. regulations
- Yotpo: Enables post-purchase reviews and loyalty program integration
- Klaviyo: Centralized email and SMS engagement to nurture audiophile relationships
- Searchspring: Collection curation, faceted filtering, and merchandising for both new and used products
Outcomes: Faster Launches, Smarter Trade-Ins, and Seamless Scale
The new Shopify Plus implementation delivered not just operational upgrades, but a strategic leap—unlocking cost efficiency, faster go-to-market execution, and a platform aligned with long-term growth. For The Music Room's leadership, this replatform wasn’t a redesign—it was a business enabler:
- Faster merchandising: Create and launch new content or landing pages in hours, not days
- Improved offer processing: Trade-in workflows streamlined for speed and scale
- Multi-app integration: Unified system supporting ERP, tax, shipping, loyalty, and marketing
- Tailored shopping experience: Used and factory authorized gear clearly segmented for search, filters, and checkout
- Platform scalability: Shopify Plus supports growth without rework or infrastructure rebuilds
With Shopify Plus in place and go-live planned for July, The Music Room is positioned to grow faster, deepen its customer relationships, and expand into new markets with confidence. The team anticipates record engagement from audiophile communities, higher conversion rates across trade-in and used gear flows, and continued investment in international reach.
Based on MTN Haus’ experience with similar Shopify Plus replatforms, the leadership team expects tangible ROI within months of launch—through improved content velocity, lower operational overhead, and increased revenue from trade-in flows and used gear inventory.
Strategic impact projections include:
- 30–50% faster page deployment cycles—freeing marketing and dev teams to focus on growth initiatives
- 20–35% improvement in trade-in processing time—reducing friction in a high-margin sales channel
- 15–25% lift in trade-in conversion rates—supporting LTV and repeat purchases
- 20% increase in used product sales—monetizing existing inventory faster
- Significant drop in manual overhead—cutting labor costs across merchandising, support, and admin
