Customer Story · Home & Furniture

15 years of bespoke shipping rules, replatformed to Shopify in 5 days.

How 15 years of custom shipping logic moved to Shopify Plus in two weeks — without losing a single rule.

"We moved from a custom-built solution to Shopify Plus with complex shipping requirements — multiple zones, upgrade options, and carrier integrations. Flare handled all of it with ease and saved us a significant amount of development time. Alex and Daniel were excellent throughout onboarding."
★★★★★
Jonathan Warren, Time4sleep
Verified Shopify App Store review
time4sleep.co.uk/checkout
Choose your delivery date
Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 1
Saturday delivery +£25.00
Shopify Plus Live April 2025 5.0★
14,790
Orders Processed
£6m+
GMV Processed
5 days
Custom Dev Work
5.0★
App Store Rating

Live on Shopify Plus since April 2025

How the rules work

What a Time4sleep customer's delivery options actually depend on.

Sample order
Postcode LS12 3AB Zone 2 · UK Mainland
Product Ottoman bed In stock · Warehouse
Time 2:15 PM · Friday After midday cut-off
Postcode zone check Zone 2 · UK Mainland
Product type check In stock · Warehouse dispatch
Cut-off time check After midday · Next working day
Service + surcharge check Evening unavailable in Zone 2
Available dates & services
17 18 19 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 1 2 3 4 5
No warehouse dispatch on Sundays
After-midday cut-off → Tuesday earliest
Zone 2 · Saturday +£25
Standard Free Tue 20 May
Morning +£15 Tue 20 May
Saturday +£25 Sat 24 May
Evening Not available in Zone 2
The challenge

Three strategic reasons to move to Shopify Plus.

01

Maintainability

A modern, app-extensible foundation. Easier to hire for, easier to train, no individual developer holding the keys to the shipping logic.

02

Predictable cost

Subscription pricing replaces open-ended custom dev hours. No surprise quotes when something needs to change.

03

Checkout performance

The custom platform's checkout was years behind modern Shopify Plus — which matters in a category where mid-decision cart abandonment is the single biggest revenue leak.

This is what 15 years of furniture-delivery refinement looks like — and it couldn't break in the move.

15 years Accumulated logic
9 zones Postcode-based
5 services Independently priced
2 carriers Routed by product
314 rules Postcode-level
50+ dates Blocked per year
Midday Cut-off
Dropship Separate flow
The decision

Why Flare, not another rebuild.

Custom rebuild
Flare
Time to live 6–12 months 2 weeks
Dev cost £40K+ estimated 5 days included
Maintenance Ongoing dev hours Dashboard self-serve
New features Custom build each time Ship continuously
Modern checkout Custom each version Built-in, battle-tested
The setup

Five dimensions of delivery logic. Configured in days, not months.

Time4sleep's full operational reality, mirrored inside Flare.

Flare Admin · Postcode Zones
Time4sleep postcode zones configuration in Flare admin
Admin screenshot — postcode zones
Postcodes & zones

Remote postcodes stop seeing dates the courier can't meet.

UK mainland split into 6 delivery zones by postcode, plus separate zones for small-item parcel deliveries, dropship products, and sample orders. Highland and island customers automatically see adjusted lead times.

Flare Admin · Cut-off Rules
Time4sleep cut-off time configuration in Flare admin
Admin screenshot — cut-off rules
Cut-offs that respect reality

The website stops promising dates the dispatch team can't honour.

Midday cut-off for next-working-day delivery. Orders placed after midday on Friday don't show Saturday — they show Tuesday, because the warehouse doesn't pick over the weekend.

Flare Admin · Delivery Services
Time4sleep delivery services configuration in Flare admin
Admin screenshot — delivery services
Five delivery services with surcharges

Premium delivery sold at checkout, without ops handling surcharges.

Standard, Morning, Afternoon, Evening, and Saturday — each priced independently, available in different zones, configurable from one dashboard. Customers see the price difference before they pick the date.

Flare Admin · Product Rules
Time4sleep product lead time rules in Flare admin
Admin screenshot — product rules
Lead times by product, not by guess

Stock-outs and dropship orders stop generating angry emails.

In-stock items show next-day delivery. Out-of-stock items show the real restock date, calculated from product-level lead times. Dropship products (shipped by suppliers, not Time4sleep's warehouse) skip the calendar entirely so customers aren't promised dates Time4sleep can't control.

Flare Admin · Blocked Dates
Time4sleep blocked dates calendar in Flare admin
Admin screenshot — blocked dates
Blocked dates, managed live

No more accidental Christmas Eve orders that need refunding.

Bank holidays, warehouse closures, peak-period capacity caps — all blocked in one dashboard, applied either globally or per zone (so Scottish bank holidays can be blocked separately from English ones). Adjustable in seconds when operations change.

The agency view

'This can mirror everything we've got now.'

Time4sleep's development is run by Northern Artillery, a UK agency that has worked with the brand for 15+ years across three platforms — custom PHP, Magento, and now Shopify Plus. Their role during this migration wasn't to implement after the decision was made. It was to evaluate feasibility before commitment. Ben Upex, who leads the Time4sleep account, sat in on the first Flare scoping call as the technical evaluator.

"We were a little bit concerned going into this — we had very bespoke shipping rules. So to find out that Flare can mirror everything we've got now is a big help."
Ben Upex, Northern Artillery
Time4sleep's development agency

The first scoping call walked through Time4sleep's existing rules one by one. Northern Artillery confirmed each was configurable in Flare without custom code. The decision to migrate followed.

For agencies evaluating Flare for a migrating client, what Northern Artillery did on that first scoping call is the model: walk through every existing rule, confirm whether each one is configurable in Flare without code, and only commission custom development for the specific things that genuinely need it. For Time4sleep, the answer to that question was almost universally yes.

The checkout experience

How a Time4sleep customer selects their delivery date.

1
Postcode LS12 3AB
Zone 2 · UK Mainland
Enter postcode
2
18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31
After-midday cut-off respected
Choose date
3
StandardFree
Morning+£15
Saturday+£25
Select service
4
Delivery confirmed Tue 20 May · Standard · Free
Confirm at checkout

Video walkthrough coming soon — here's the flow as customers experience it today.

What we learned

What Time4sleep did right that other migrating brands should copy.

01

Document every rule before migration starts

Time4sleep mapped all 314 postcode rules and 50+ annual blocked dates before kickoff, not during. This let Flare verify feasibility on the first scoping call.

02

Bring the agency into the scoping call

Northern Artillery were the evaluators of feasibility, not the implementers. Their verification on day one removed the biggest migration risk.

03

Migrate the shipping logic before launching

Time4sleep configured Flare in staging while the rest of the Shopify Plus build was in flight, so go-live was a switch-over, not a build-out.

04

Don't rebuild what an app can configure

Every custom-coded rule from the previous platform was tested against Flare's configuration surface first. Custom development was only commissioned for the specific carrier integration that needed it.

05

Treat post-launch as the test, not pre-launch

Time4sleep went live with the existing rule set, then iterated based on the first 30 days of real orders. Flare's dashboard meant changes happened in minutes, not engineering sprints.

Common questions from migrating brands

How long does a migration usually take?
Typical Shopify Plus replatform is 6–12 weeks end-to-end. Flare's portion is 1–2 weeks inside that window once rules are documented.
What if my rules are more complex?
Time4sleep had 9 zones, 5 services, 2 carriers, and dropship flows. The complexity ceiling for configuration is meaningfully higher than this. The first scoping call confirms feasibility.
What should I ask my agency before starting?
Whether they have evaluated Flare's configuration surface against your existing rule set. If they default to a custom build without testing the app layer first, they're recreating the original problem on a new platform.
What happens if a rule needs to change post-launch?
Dashboard change, not engineering ticket. Most rule changes take minutes.
What's not handled by configuration?
Carrier integrations beyond the standard set, custom 3PL push-pull logic, bespoke pricing calculations. These are flagged at scoping, not discovered at launch.

Is this approach right for your store?

AOV £200+ — delivery is a meaningful decision moment, not an afterthought
Multiple delivery services or zones that justify configuration depth
Operational complexity that Shopify's default shipping can't handle
Either migrating to Shopify Plus or already on Plus with shipping pain
A dev agency or in-house team willing to evaluate before building

Have shipping rules like Time4sleep?

Most furniture, home, and high-AOV brands are live within a week. Book a demo and we'll show you the same setup, configured for your operations.

← Or read more case studies

5.0 out of 5

94 verified reviews on the Shopify App Store · Built for Shopify

Built for Shopify