Delivering Crufts Club Website in 12 Weeks

PSP partnered with The Royal Kennel Club to design and deliver the Crufts Club digital platform (cruftsclub.com) at pace going from initiation through build, testing and business UAT in just 12 weeks. The result is a modern subscription experience built on Umbraco, backed by Azure-native services, and integrated through an Azure API Management (APIM) layer to enable a flexible, best-of-breed MACH architecture.

The challenge: launch-ready capability on a fixed timeline

Crufts has immovable deadlines. That meant the Crufts Club platform needed to be production-ready with content management, subscription purchase journeys, and partner integrations on a compressed delivery window. At the same time, the technology choices had to support long-term change: new partners, evolving subscription products, and future service improvements without major rework.

Solution overview: Umbraco on Azure, with APIM as the integration backbone

The platform was implemented as a cloud-hosted Umbraco solution, with a clear separation between the experience layer and the services it depends on. This approach supports a “swap and scale” model enabling components to be enhanced or replaced without destabilising the whole estate.

• Experience layer: Umbraco CMS delivering editorial control, rapid page build, and content iteration, presented for both mobile and desktop. 
• Cloud foundation: Azure-hosted environments supporting development, UAT and production deployment.
• Integration layer: An Azure API Management (APIM) layer (Azure APIM integration) to standardise, secure and monitor integrations between the website and downstream systems.
• Best-of-breed commerce capability: Stripe for subscription payments bringing mature recurring billing, payment resilience, and strong compliance controls as a managed service.
• MACH-aligned design: A modular approach that emphasises composable services and clean integration boundaries, helping teams move faster while reducing coupling.

Why APIM matters: using APIM as the integration gateway enabled consistent API security, traffic management, and observability from day one. It also decoupled the Umbraco front end from downstream change so new endpoints, partners, and policy updates could be introduced with minimal impact on the website codebase.

What this enables

• Faster change: content teams can update the site through Umbraco while technical teams evolve integrations behind the APIM boundary.
• Reduced operational burden: Stripe offloads key subscription payment capabilities (recurring billing, retries, fraud tooling) to a proven platform.
• Improved resilience and security: centralised API policies and monitoring via APIM helps protect downstream systems and provides clearer operational visibility.
• A futureproof foundation: the composable approach supports new partners, features, and services without forcing a complete rebuild.

Conclusion

In 12 weeks, PSP helped The Royal Kennel Club bring Crufts Club to market with a digital platform designed to drive their community growth and deliver a smooth, trusted purchase experience. Through our at pace delivery, we made it possible to launch at Crufts 2026 at the NEC. By pairing Umbraco’s content agility with an Azure APIM integration layer and Stripe for subscriptions, the solution supports faster campaigns and updates, reliable payment operations, and a scalable foundation for adding new services and partners over time.