Fashion brand migration to Shopify Plus case study
Fashion brand migration to Shopify Plus
How Starcodia migrated a luxury fashion retailer from Magento 2 to Shopify Plus, protecting SEO equity while dramatically improving site performance and operational efficiency.
Client context
An established luxury fashion brand had been running on Magento 2 for five years. The platform had served them well during growth, but increasing maintenance costs, slow site performance, and developer dependency for routine changes had become constraints rather than enablers.
The brand sold direct to consumers through their website, operated a flagship retail location, and maintained a growing wholesale business with boutiques and department stores. Their catalog included over 5,000 SKUs across multiple categories, with complex variant structures for size, color and material combinations.
Key stakeholders had concerns about migration risk: would they lose organic search rankings that drove 40% of revenue? Would their existing customers experience friction? Could they maintain their wholesale operations during the transition?
The challenge
The migration needed to achieve several objectives simultaneously:
- Move 5,000+ products with complex variant structures to Shopify Plus without data loss
- Preserve organic search visibility that accounted for 40% of revenue
- Reduce page load times that had crept above 4 seconds on mobile
- Enable merchandising and content teams to make changes without developer involvement
- Implement B2B functionality for wholesale accounts currently managed via spreadsheets
- Integrate with their existing ERP for inventory and order management
- Complete the migration without extended trading disruption
Timeline was critical. The brand wanted to launch before their peak autumn/winter season, giving approximately 12 weeks from project start to go-live.
What Starcodia delivered
Starcodia structured the project in phases that allowed parallel workstreams while managing dependencies.
Discovery and planning. The first two weeks focused on detailed audit of the existing Magento store: URL structures, content types, product data models, integrations, and traffic patterns. This informed the migration plan, redirect strategy and Shopify architecture.
Data migration. Products, customers and order history were migrated using a structured data audit and cleanup approach. Variant structures were optimized for Shopify's model. Customer accounts were migrated with password reset triggers.
SEO preservation. Following the SEO preservation framework, Starcodia mapped every URL to its Shopify equivalent, implemented comprehensive redirects, and preserved on-page elements including titles, descriptions and structured data. High-value landing pages received individual attention.
Theme development. A new Shopify Plus theme was developed with the brand's visual identity, improved product filtering and navigation, and mobile-first performance optimization. Lookbook templates enabled editorial content alongside commerce.
B2B implementation. B2B wholesale functionality was configured using Shopify Plus B2B features. Wholesale accounts were migrated with their pricing tiers. Buyers could now log in, see their prices, and place orders without email back-and-forth.
ERP integration. ERP integration connected Shopify to the brand's inventory and order management system. Orders flow automatically for fulfillment. Inventory updates in near real-time.
Testing and launch. Structured UAT covered functionality, data accuracy and performance. The cutover was planned for a low-traffic window with rollback contingencies. Launch was monitored closely for the first two weeks.
Results
The migration delivered measurable improvements across key metrics:
- 60% faster page load times. Mobile page load dropped from 4.2 seconds to under 1.7 seconds, improving Core Web Vitals and user experience.
- SEO visibility protected. Organic traffic recovered within 3 weeks and exceeded pre-migration levels within 6 weeks. No significant ranking losses for priority keywords.
- 15% conversion rate improvement. Faster pages and improved navigation contributed to higher conversion within three months of launch.
- Merchandising independence. The marketing team now makes content and merchandising changes without developer tickets, reducing time-to-publish from days to hours.
- B2B self-service. Wholesale accounts place orders online with their pricing, reducing order processing overhead by 60%.
- Reduced platform costs. Total cost of ownership decreased compared to Magento hosting, maintenance and developer dependency.
Key learnings
Several factors contributed to the successful migration:
Early URL mapping and redirect planning prevented SEO disruption. The redirect map was complete before theme development finished, and was tested extensively in staging.
Parallel workstreams kept the timeline on track. While theme development progressed, data migration and integration work ran concurrently with clear interface points.
Stakeholder communication reduced launch anxiety. Weekly updates, clear milestone tracking and documented contingencies kept the client confident through the process.
Services and capabilities demonstrated
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