Case Study - Automating Tournament Sign-Ups for Chess Tournaments with Shopify Hydrogen

The Problem

La Torre Ambulante, a growing chess community, faced serious operational friction managing player sign-ups for their popular tournaments. Despite high interest, their registration process was chaotic and prone to error.

Registrations arrived via Instagram DMs — overwhelming the organizer and leading to missed players.

Payments were made through manual bank transfers, which were hard to track and often disconnected from player information.

Sign-up errors were common, including lost records and mismatched payments.

The process was time-consuming, error-prone, and unscalable for future events.

The client needed a system that would centralize registration, automate payment, and reduce human error — all while preserving their visual brand and delivering a polished, professional experience to players.

The Objective

Build a high-performance, branded registration platform that would:

• Replace messy DMs and manual tracking with a centralized, automated sign-up flow
• Collect all necessary player info in one go
• Connect sign-up and payment into a single, intuitive experience
• Run on Shopify (for reliability) but avoid the limitations of theme-based frontends
• Be fast, scalable, and easy for the client to manage without tech skills

The Solution

We architected a custom headless e-commerce platform using Shopify Hydrogen, a React-based framework that gave us full control over the user experience while keeping Shopify’s robust backend for commerce.

Key Features Delivered:

• Custom Sign-Up Workflow - Users filled out a branded form with all necessary info: name, contact, player level, and more — no more back-and-forth on Instagram.
• Dynamic Checkout Integration - Each registration dynamically generated a custom Shopify "product," allowing us to use the Storefront API to link user input directly to checkout — without breaking flow.
• Full Design Control - We crafted a fully custom UI aligned with the client's visual identity, avoiding the limitations of standard Shopify themes.
• Performance First - Hydrogen's server-side rendering and performance optimizations ensured a fast, responsive experience across devices — key for mobile-first users.
• Scalable Backend Logic - The system was built modularly, allowing for future tournament setups with minimal changes and easy content updates by the client.
• Zero Registration Errors - All player info and payment were captured in a single system, eliminating confusion and mismatched records.

We developed the platform to be reused for future events, meaning the client can now launch sign-up pages with confidence in just hours.