E-commerce platform migrations keep eating quarters of online growth, and the physical store keeps holding the line while the site rebuilds.
Musti Group just posted the latest example: online sales grew 5.1% in Q2, with like-for-like growth of 1.3%. The culprit, per the company: "re-platforming of its e-commerce offering." Meanwhile, like-for-like store sales grew 3% in H1, with improved performance in all segments, the company reports.
Digital's share of total sales dropped from 23.2% in 2025 to 21.4% this year. The stores didn't just hold, they picked up the slack.
The evidence stack
Musti isn't the first retailer to watch a platform change crater online velocity. The pattern: a retailer bets on a new e-commerce backbone to unlock scale, the migration drags longer than planned, SKU mismatches or search indexing breaks, and quarters of momentum vanish while the physical business keeps compounding at low-single-digit comps.
Musti's H1 numbers make the trade visible. Total net sales rose 14.7% year-over-year to €277.1 million ($315.5M), with the December 2025 acquisition of Portuguese retailer ZU contributing €17.2 million ($19.6M) to net sales. Online sales increased by 7.3% in H1, accounting for 22.1% of total revenue. But in Q2, online like-for-like growth was 1.3%, nearly flat.
The stores, by contrast, delivered consistent 3% like-for-like growth across H1, the company reports. Norway saw strong like-for-like growth of 11% during H1, helped by the NOK exchange rate and the acquisition of Petco Retail in May. Sweden opened 8 directly operated locations and 2 acquired units in H1, with growth also supported by a stronger SEK exchange rate. Finland saw a small decline of 0.1% in revenue in Q2, with H1 growth of 1.4%, attributed to a 0.4% drop in like-for-like sales.
Store count grew from 420 locations in 2025 to 522 in Q2 2026, including veterinary clinics. Customer count rose from 1.8 million to 1.9 million, not including the Baltics or ZU.
CEO David Rönnberg called it "resilient underlying demand" and "the ongoing appeal of our network." Translation: when the website stumbles, the store still converts.
What the pattern predicts
If you're an omnichannel retailer planning a platform migration, the Musti playbook says: expect online growth to slow, possibly sharply. Budget for it. The site will break in ways you didn't test. Loyal customers will shift channels, and some will just walk into the store.
The stores won't save you from a bad migration, but they'll keep the business from going backward while you fix it.
For independent retailers watching this from the outside, the read is simpler: the physical store still converts when digital stumbles. Musti's gross margin improved 1 percentage point to 44.2% in H1, driven partly by increased own-brand food production in their own factory. The stores delivered that margin while online growth slowed.
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The thing that would prove this wrong
Musti says the platform issues are temporary and expects online growth to recover. If the next quarters show digital sales accelerating back to stronger growth, then the migration pain was worth it and the new platform unlocked the scale they paid for.
But if online growth stays weak while the stores keep delivering steady comps, the pattern holds: platform upgrades carry real execution risk, and the physical business is what holds the line while you work through it.
Musti recorded a net loss of €7.8 million ($8.9M) in H1, wider than the €4.4 million ($5M) loss in the same period last year. Rönnberg attributed the loss to "strategic investments in growth and scalability," including the platform development, logistics improvements, ERP investments, and assortment optimization. The company views these costs as temporary.
For the full year, Musti expects "a gradual return to its long-term growth rate of 4%," supported by an expected increase in puppies and kittens and improving consumer spending power across European markets toward 2027.
What to watch next
If you're a brand relying on Musti's e-commerce channel to scale distribution in the Nordics, the online growth you modeled isn't materializing yet. Consider building out independent store distribution or other channel plays while the platform stabilizes.
If you're a store owner who delayed a site rebuild because the quote scared you, Musti just validated that instinct. The physical business is what pays the bills while the digital side catches up. Invest in the store experience first, the margin's there, the customer's there, and it doesn't go offline when the migration runs long.
The thing to watch: whether Musti's next-quarter online comps recover or stay flat. If they stay flat, the pattern's proven again, and every retailer planning a platform bet should budget for longer timelines and higher costs than the initial estimate.