Instead of building in-house, they got superior infrastructure with full data ownership and control
Garden Grove Co., a premium home and garden retailer, was at a crossroads. Their marketing had scaled significantly, with multi-channel attribution becoming critical to understanding what drove their $15M in annual revenue. They needed unified Shopify and GA4 data, but weren't sure whether to build or buy.
Their technical co-founder was capable of building a custom solution. They could set up BigQuery, write ETL scripts to sync Shopify and GA4 data, and build internal dashboards. But that meant months of development time, ongoing maintenance, and pulling engineering resources away from their core product roadmap.
The concern with third-party tools: data lock-in. They'd seen too many vendors hold customer data hostage, making it difficult or impossible to export if they wanted to switch platforms. They wanted a solution that provided infrastructure without sacrificing ownership and control of their data.
"We were leaning toward building it ourselves just to maintain control of our data. But that meant 3+ months of development and ongoing maintenance. We needed something better: infrastructure without vendor lock-in."
- Elena Rodriguez, Co-founder & CTO at Garden Grove Co.
Garden Grove chose GA4+SHOPIFY after discovering the platform's architecture: all customer data lives in the customer's own BigQuery instance. They owned 100% of their data from day one, with full export capabilities and no vendor lock-in. If they ever decided to leave, their complete data warehouse stayed with them.
But they got more than just data ownership. GA4+SHOPIFY provided production-grade infrastructure that would have taken their team months to build: automated Shopify to BigQuery sync, GA4 data integration, attribution matching, automated reconciliation, and pre-built dashboards optimized for Shopify merchants.
The platform handled edge cases they hadn't even considered: order refunds and cancellations, partial shipments, multi-currency conversions, attribution window logic, and data quality validation. All the complexity that would have required months of refinement after their initial build was handled automatically.
Cost efficiency: By choosing GA4+SHOPIFY over building in-house, Garden Grove saved an estimated $120K in development costs (3 months of engineering time plus ongoing maintenance). They got to market in days instead of months.
Data ownership: All their Shopify and GA4 data lives in their own BigQuery instance. They can run custom queries, build additional analytics, or export everything at any time. Zero vendor lock-in with complete control.
Superior quality: The platform handled edge cases and complexities that would have taken months to discover and fix in a custom build. They got production-tested infrastructure instead of a v1 that would need constant refinement.
Engineering focus: Their technical team stayed focused on product development instead of becoming maintainers of internal data infrastructure. They got better results while keeping resources aligned with core business objectives.
"They built the tool we were about to build, and did it better. We own all our data in our BigQuery instance, but we don't have to maintain any of the infrastructure. It's the best of both worlds: control without complexity."
- Elena Rodriguez, Co-founder & CTO at Garden Grove Co.
See how GA4+SHOPIFY gives you complete data ownership with zero vendor lock-in.
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