Client Story · FUTEK
A technical catalog, freed from the developer bottleneck.
FUTEK builds precision sensors for aerospace, medical, and robotics. Its product data was rich but trapped behind a legacy CMS where every change needed an engineer. Luminos moved it onto a platform FUTEK's own team can run, without ever touching the orders.
FUTEK designs and manufactures precision load cells, torque, force, and pressure sensors for aerospace, medical, robotics, automotive, and industrial R&D. It sells globally through a direct sales team and application engineers, backed by a deep technical catalog: thousands of ERP/PLM-driven SKUs, plus datasheets, 3D CAD models, and calibration certificates for nearly all of them.
All of it lived on a legacy in-house CMS. Every change went through a developer. Luminos moved FUTEK onto a modern headless platform in three connected builds, each one leaning on the last, and left the ecommerce and ERP systems that were already working exactly where they were.
Replatforming to Optimizely CMS 12
Off a legacy in-house CMS, onto a composable headless platform, with the order flow left untouched.
Every content change at FUTEK went through a developer, and the legacy CMS had no route to headless delivery, GraphQL, or multi-language, so the roadmap kept stalling on the platform itself. The ERP and checkout, though, worked fine. Those were off-limits.
At a glance
From: Legacy in-house CMS · To: Optimizely CMS 12, headless, composable · Constraint: Zero disruption to existing ecommerce and ERP order flow
Systems integrated
The build
We moved FUTEK's content into Optimizely CMS 12 and rebuilt the storefront in Angular, reading through Content Graph over GraphQL with a thin REST bridge for runtime exceptions like live stock and forms. The order engine we deliberately left alone, integrating at the API boundary so FUTEK's checkout kept working exactly as before while everything around it changed.
The real challenge was keeping the storefront honest against the ERP, since a sensor catalog is only useful if its specs and stock are right. Our five-stage sync pipeline, resumable and audited, turns FUTEK's ERP/PLM data into a fully merchandised CMS, from specs and SEO fields to 3D models and datasheets. It runs a nightly delta with a real-time stock push and reconciles every item, so the storefront always reflects the ERP, and nothing that breaks on the content side can reach an order.
- The developers are out of content operations. Editors and merchandisers now own product pages, media, redirects, and language settings themselves.
- The order flow was never at risk. Data ownership stayed with FUTEK's ERP; only the content and presentation layers moved.
A headless storefront, rebuilt from the content up
A modern, responsive customer experience decoupled from CMS internals, with SEO and live data preserved end to end.
FUTEK's frontend was welded to the legacy CMS. Refreshes crawled, templates drifted, and nothing shipped without a backend release. The redesign came with one hard rule: rebuild all of it and lose nothing along the way, search ranking, live product data, and multi-language all had to survive.
At a glance
Model: Headless, content-driven storefront · Design: Figma design system, mobile-first, reusable component library · Data: Every page, block, and SEO field rendered from the CMS
Systems integrated
The build
We started in Figma rather than in code, building a full design system and mobile-first layouts for every page type, signed off as a prototype before development began. The rebuilt storefront is entirely content-driven, so every page, block, and SEO field renders from the CMS. FUTEK's marketing team now changes the live site on their own, and engineers never become the bottleneck for a copy edit or a new landing page.
- Frontend and CMS are cleanly decoupled. The team builds against a strongly-typed GraphQL contract and iterates on the UI while editors change content, neither blocking the other.
- SEO, live data, and localization survived the move intact. Language-prefixed URLs, real-time stock, related-model links, localized strings, all carried through with no loss of ranking or accuracy.
A configurator that speaks the customer's language
From a raw-parameter filter only an engineer could use, to a guided flow that recommends the right sensor.
The old configurator dropped you straight into raw engineering parameters. You had to know the sensor spec before you could go looking for the sensor, so application engineers spent their days answering questions the tool should have handled. It also ran backward from how FUTEK sells: their engineers start with what a customer needs to measure, and the configurator started with the catalog.
At a glance
Shift: Parameter-first, recommendation-driven flow · Design: Figma redesign aligned to the storefront · Build: Angular configurator with a real-time matching engine
Systems integrated
The build
So we turned the interaction around. The configurator now opens on a question - what are you trying to measure, and the customer answers in the terms they actually think in: capacity, environment, accuracy, form factor. The engine works the catalog in real time behind that, surfacing the sensors that fit and explaining why. Plain-language labels sit beside the technical units and advanced controls stay hidden until needed, so one tool serves a procurement buyer and an application engineer without watering down for either.
- Customers self-serve in their own language, describing a measurement instead of decoding FUTEK's internal part taxonomy across thousands of SKUs.
- Basic pre-sales selection moved off the engineers' desks, where it was never a good use of application-engineering time.
Own your platform. Protect your orders.
FUTEK modernized every layer a customer or editor touches, and handed control of it back to their own team. The systems that were already working, ecommerce and ERP, were never put at risk. Everything to gain, nothing to lose.
If a legacy platform has your team stuck waiting on developer tickets, that's a solvable problem.
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