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A New Foundation: How David Donahue Rebuilt Its Shopify Experience

How David Donahue partnered with Zettler Digital to rebuild its Shopify storefront on the Broadcast theme — replacing a rigid, aging setup with a flexible, brand-forward site engineered for the complexity of menswear merchandising.

A Menswear Institution, Finally Matched by Its Website

David Donahue has been dressing men for success since 1972. Founded in New York City's fashion district, the brand grew from a small accessory company into one of America's leading menswear labels. Today, under the leadership of Rob and Suzy Donohue, David Donahue offers a full range of dress shirts, neckwear, tailored clothing, and sportswear, with each season bringing new fabrics, fits, and designs rooted in that same founding precision.

The brand's catalog reflects that precision in every detail — fit options, neck sizes, sleeve lengths, color stories told across separate listings. But for years, the website couldn't keep up. Built on an aging Shopify theme that had been patched and customized over time, the storefront was rigid where the business needed flexibility, slow where customers expected speed, and shallow where the catalog demanded depth.

David Donahue brought in Zettler Digital to fix that — rebuilding the site on the Broadcast theme with purpose-built customizations designed around how the brand actually sells.

The Challenge

A Brand Built on Precision, Running on a Platform That Couldn't Keep Up

David Donahue had outgrown its original Shopify setup. The site had been customized over the years to accommodate the brand's merchandising needs, but those patches added up to a storefront that was brittle, slow, and difficult to manage. Content updates required developer involvement. Mobile performance lagged. The navigation couldn't support the depth the catalog required. And for a brand that sells dress shirts with fit, neck, and sleeve specifications — precision in the product experience matters.

Key challenges included:

- Outdated theme with rigid layout and limited content flexibility

- Poor mobile optimization and slow load times

- Navigation that couldn't support a third level of hierarchy

- No clean solution for managing color variants across separate product listings

- Product forms that didn't enforce proper variant selection before purchase, creating fulfillment risk

- Limited ability for the internal team to update pages and merchandising independently

The Solution

A Theme Build Engineered for Menswear

Zettler Digital rebuilt the David Donahue site on the Broadcast theme, using it as a flexible foundation and layering in purpose-built customizations to address the brand's core merchandising and operational requirements.

Metafield-Driven Content ArchitectureMetafields were implemented throughout the site — including within the mega menu — enabling the team to manage dynamic content, imagery, and navigation elements without touching code. Collection-based images in the mega menu update automatically based on what the customer is hovering, creating a more immersive, interactive browsing experience.

Combined Listings with Instant Color NavigationColors are merchandised as separate product listings within collections — consistent with David Donahue's catalog structure — but linked together via a shared master product relationship. When a customer navigates between color options on a PDP, the alternate listing loads instantaneously, preserving context without a full page reload.

Structured Variant Selection for Dress ShirtsThe product form enforces sequential variant selection — fit, then neck size, then sleeve length — before a customer can proceed. This ensures customers identify the right combination before reaching the cart, reducing sizing errors and returns while building confidence in the purchase.

Mega Menu with Three-Level NavigationThe new mega menu introduced a third tier of navigation that the previous theme couldn't support, giving the brand the structural depth needed to surface categories, subcategories, and featured content in a single, intuitive dropdown — with metafield-driven imagery that updates dynamically based on the collection being browsed.

Filtering Flexibility and UX RefinementsCollection filtering was expanded and refined to help customers navigate a broad catalog by fit, style, and other relevant attributes — reducing friction on the path to the right product.

The Results

A Storefront That Works as Hard as Its Customer

The rebuilt David Donahue site delivered meaningful operational and commercial results with +17% Average Order Value (AOV) since launch. The internal team gained control over content and merchandising, developer dependency for ongoing updates dropped significantly, and the product experience now reflects the precision and polish the brand has stood for since 1972.

“

"The old site had gotten us this far, but it wasn't built for where we're going. Zettler Digital understood both sides of that — they respected the brand and what it stands for, and they built something that actually works the way our business works. The team can now manage the site the way it should have always been managed, and the shopping experience finally reflects the quality of what's inside the box. It's a site we're proud to send customers to."

”
AvatarNick LedwitzDirector of Ecommerce, David Donahue

A Rebuild Worth Wearing.

For a brand that has spent over 50 years refusing to cut corners, settling for a website that didn't reflect that standard was never the right answer. The new David Donahue storefront isn't just faster and more flexible — it's a site built with the same attention to detail that goes into every shirt the brand produces. The foundation is in place. Now the brand can focus on what it's always done best: dressing men for whatever comes next.

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