Stagebit’s Magento 1 to Shopify migration for Party Expert, a Canadian party supplies and costume retailer, delivered zero downtime and 100% of products, customers, and order history preserved. Party Expert’s old Magento 1 platform couldn’t keep pace with seasonal demand peaks; the new Shopify storefront is faster, more conversion-focused, and built for seasonal retail at scale.
In 30 minutes, we assess your Magento 1 setup, identify migration risks, review SEO and data requirements and outline a realistic Shopify migration plan covering timelines, integrations and budget ranges. Not ready for a call yet? See our Shopify development services or browse more case studies first.
Downtime during migration
0 hours
Magento store stayed live until final cut-over.
Data migration accuracy
100%
Products, customers, orders & URLs migrated.
Page load speed
< 3s
Improved storefront performance on mobile & desktop.
Sales growth
+210%
After launch on Shopify.
The New Shopify Storefront
Key screens from the Magento 1 → Shopify migration — redesigned user experience, faster storefront performance, simplified navigation and a more scalable ecommerce platform built to support seasonal demand and future growth.
Homepage: a modern shopping experienc
The new Shopify homepage provides a faster and more engaging experience with improved merchandising, clearer navigation and better support for seasonal campaigns.
Collection page: faster product discovery
Products are organized through a cleaner Shopify collection structure, helping customers quickly browse party supplies by category, theme and occasion.
Product page: optimized for conversion
Redesigned product pages provide clearer information hierarchy, better visuals and a smoother path to purchase across desktop and mobile devices.
Mobile experience: built for modern shopper
The Shopify storefront was optimized for mobile-first browsing, delivering faster load times, smoother navigation and improved checkout usability during peak seasonal traffic.
Client overview
Founded in 1999, Party Expert is one of Canada’s most recognised retailers for party costumes, decorations, themed props and accessories. With physical stores across Canada and a high-volume seasonal catalogue, ecommerce plays a central role in supporting both online revenue and in-store engagement, particularly during Halloween, the holiday season and large-scale events.
As mobile shopping expectations rose and seasonal traffic spikes became more demanding, the performance and flexibility of the ecommerce platform became a competitive issue.
“Our Magento store gets hammered every Halloween. We needed to move to something more reliable and easier to manage, but we couldn’t afford to lose customer data or our search rankings during a botched migration. Getting it wrong in peak season would cost us months of revenue.”
The situation
By the time Party Expert brought Stagebit in, the Magento 1 store had become a bottleneck rather than a platform.
Goals & success criteria
Before starting the Magento 1 to Shopify migration, Stagebit and Party Expert’s leadership team defined a set of non-negotiable outcomes. These guided every
technical, UX and operational decision — from data mapping to checkout configuration to launch timing.
The full migration — discovery through go-live — ran 9 weeks, which is within our typical 6–12 week range for a Magento 1 to Shopify project of this size.
The migration had to be invisible to customers. Party Expert’s Magento 1 store needed to stay fully operational, including during high-traffic seasonal periods, until the moment of final DNS cut-over.
All products, customer accounts, historical orders and existing URL structures needed to migrate to Shopify with full accuracy and traceability. No gaps. No mismatched records.
Halloween, the holiday season and large event periods drive the majority of Party Expert’s annual ecommerce volume. The Shopify storefront had to load fast and convert reliably under that peak demand, on mobile especially.
Checkout needed to work reliably with the payment methods Party Expert’s Canadian customers already use, with clear delivery date visibility and post-purchase communication built in from day one.
Seasonal catalogue changes, new promotions and storefront banners needed to be manageable by the internal team, not dependent on a developer for every routine update before Halloween or the holiday rush.
The new platform had to support Party Expert’s growth without requiring replatforming again. That meant app-driven extensibility, predictable SaaS infrastructure and the ability to add new locations or channels as the business expands.
Shopify features & enhancements
This kind of Magento 1 to Shopify replatforming gave Party Expert the opportunity to rebuild the Canadian retail operation properly, not just replicate it. Location-based inventory, a faster checkout and a storefront designed for seasonal peaks replaced what Magento 1 required significant custom work to approximate.
Inventory & locations
Stagebit configured Shopify’s multi-location inventory to reflect Party Expert’s Canadian store network: accurate stock visibility per location, location-aware fulfilment and a single admin for centrally managing all inventory rather than juggling separate systems.
Search & discovery
Stagebit restructured collections, navigation and search around how Party Expert’s customers actually shop — by occasion, theme and category during high-intent seasonal periods like Halloween and the holidays. Algolia powers instant, typo-tolerant search and filtering, cutting time-to-product during peak traffic.
Payments & delivery
Stagebit configured Shopify Payments, PayPal and Google Pay for the Canadian market with a streamlined one-page checkout. Klaviyo powers SMS order notifications, giving customers visibility from purchase through to delivery — reducing post-purchase enquiries.
UX & storefront
Stagebit built the Shopify theme for speed, clarity and seasonal merchandising flexibility. The Party Expert team can now update banners, featured collections and promotions directly in Shopify admin, with no developer needed before every Halloween campaign.
This stack is typical for Canadian B2C retailers migrating from Magento 1 to Shopify with multi-location physical stores and high seasonal demand peaks.
Approach
With clear goals defined, Stagebit designed a phased migration strategy focused on data accuracy, operational continuity and a carefully planned Shopify launch, ensuring Party Expert’s Canadian store transitioned without disrupting customers, staff or search rankings. The full process, from discovery through post-launch monitoring, typically runs 6–12 weeks depending on catalogue size and integration scope.
Phase 1
Audited Magento 1 data structures, custom logic and integrations, then mapped them to Shopify’s product model, collections, locations and apps, identifying where configuration or custom solutions were required before any build work began.
Phase 2
Built the Shopify storefront, configured multi-location inventory, payments, shipping rules and apps in a staging environment, ensuring operational parity with Party Expert’s retail workflows before any data was moved. Why it mattered: Shopify Payments, PayPal, Google Pay, delivery date apps and SMS notifications were all connected and processing test orders in staging during this phase. By the time the go-live window arrived, every integration had already handled a full order cycle, payment, fulfilment and customer notification, without issues. No integration was patched in after launch.
Phase 3
Multiple full Magento 1 to Shopify migration runs were executed, validating products, customers, order history and inventory by location, and resolving edge cases well before the go-live window. Why it mattered: A single-run migration is a bet. Stagebit treated it as a repeatable, testable process, running the full migration multiple times in staging to find and fix edge cases before they became launch-day problems. By cut-over, the migration had already completed successfully more than once with zero record discrepancies. Moving from Magento’s single-location inventory model to Shopify’s multi-location setup carried the highest risk of post-launch stock discrepancies. Each physical store’s inventory was mapped, imported and reconciled against the source data before we signed off on this phase. No store went live with unvalidated stock levels.
Phase 4
Shopify launched during a low-traffic window with final data sync, DNS cut-over and close monitoring of orders, inventory and integrations, with a rollback plan in place for the first 48 hours post-launch. Why it mattered: Losing organic search rankings during a platform migration is one of the most common post-launch disasters, and one of the most avoidable. Every Magento URL was mapped to its Shopify equivalent before launch, and redirects were tested end-to-end in staging. The +80% traffic increase post-migration reflects that no SEO equity was lost in the switch.
This wasn’t a black-box migration. Stagebit ran a weekly check-in on Google Meet with Party Expert’s team to walk through progress, flag any decisions that needed their input, and set priorities for the week ahead. Day-to-day questions, from either side, went through a shared Google Chat so nothing had to sit until the next scheduled call. Bigger updates and decisions were also recapped by email, so Party Expert always had a written record of what had shipped and what was coming next.
Two parts of this migration needed more than a straight data copy. Magento and Shopify hash customer passwords differently, so account passwords couldn’t be carried over directly — returning customers were migrated with their order history and profile intact, but prompted to reset their password on first login. And a portion of Party Expert’s costume and decor catalogue used more product variations (size, colour and theme combinations) than Shopify’s variant structure supports natively, so those product lines were restructured during the migration rather than imported as a straight 1:1 copy.
Tech stack
Party Expert’s ecommerce platform was rebuilt on Shopify to support a large seasonal catalogue, location-based inventory visibility and a fast, mobile-first checkout. The stack focuses on reliability, ease of operation and long-term scalability across both online and physical Canadian stores.
This is the same approach we bring to every Shopify development project, worth a look before you book a call.
Storefront
Custom Shopify theme built for Party Expert’s Canadian B2C audience: fast load times, clear seasonal merchandising and a mobile-first layout that handles peak traffic.
Commerce logic
Shopify’s native multi-location features act as the single source of truth for inventory across Party Expert’s Canadian store network, supporting both online fulfilment and in-store availability.
Search & SEO
Search and navigation were optimised for seasonal shopping behaviour. All Magento URLs were mapped to Shopify equivalents with 301 redirects, preserving organic search equity built over years on the Canadian market.
Payments & delivery
Checkout supports the payment methods Canadian shoppers expect. Delivery date estimation and SMS order notifications reduce post-purchase enquiries and improve customer satisfaction through to delivery.
This gives Party Expert a commerce foundation built for Canadian seasonal retail: smoother operations, faster customer experiences and the confidence to scale across peak periods and future growth.
Results
The Shopify migration delivered measurable improvements across speed, traffic, sales and customer retention. Party Expert’s Canadian ecommerce operation moved from a high-maintenance Magento 1 platform to a modern Shopify storefront built for seasonal scale, and the numbers reflected it within the first 90 days of the store’s April 2019 launch. Party Expert was already an established, multi-store Canadian retailer with a high-volume seasonal catalogue before the migration; these are percentage gains on an existing revenue base, not lifts from a low-traffic starting point. The platform has held since: six Halloween and holiday seasons on the same Shopify foundation, with no replatforming required.
Site performance
Page load speed
Variable load times
Dependent on custom hosting infrastructure.
Consistently fast
Sub-3s on optimised Shopify theme and CDN.
Total users
Traffic growth
Stable but limited
Mobile experience and page speed constraining organic growth.
+80% users
Improved mobile UX, SEO continuity and faster load times.
Sales growth
Conversion performance
Multi-step checkout friction
Higher drop-off rates — particularly on mobile during peak season.
+210% sales
Frictionless Shopify checkout and faster mobile experience.
Repeat visits
Customer retention
Lower engagement
Complex navigation making return browsing less intuitive.
+60% repeat visits
Clearer UX and faster browsing improving return behaviour.
Revenue uplift
Overall ecommerce impact
Growth plateau on Magento 1
Platform overhead limiting campaign agility and seasonal upside.
+95% revenue uplift
Driven by improved speed, conversion and campaign flexibility.
Party Expert’s Shopify store launched on April 27, 2019. The figures above compare the 90 days before launch to the 90 days after (through October 12, 2019), based on Party Expert’s Google Analytics and Shopify Analytics data, shared with permission. We’re publishing this now because the four-phase approach below, parallel staging builds, rehearsed migration runs, and URL-mapped launches, is still how Stagebit runs Magento 1 to Shopify migrations today, and because six subsequent Halloween and holiday seasons on the same Shopify foundation is itself part of the result: the platform didn’t just launch well, it held up.
Party Expert’s Shopify store went live on April 27, 2019, with the DNS cut-over timed for 2am local time — customers saw zero disruption. The real test came that first Halloween: the new platform handled peak seasonal traffic without the performance issues that had defined every previous October on Magento 1.
The +210% sales increase wasn’t the result of a new marketing strategy. It came from removing friction that was already costing Party Expert customers. A faster storefront, a cleaner mobile checkout and a platform that doesn’t slow down during Halloween peak together changed what was possible.
The +95% revenue uplift compounds over time because Shopify’s admin lets the Party Expert team move faster on their own: pushing seasonal campaigns, updating collections and launching promotions without waiting for a developer.
The +80% traffic increase reflects that no SEO equity was lost during the migration. Every URL redirect was in place before DNS cut-over, so organic rankings carried over fully from the Magento 1 store.
FAQ & SUPPORT
Stagebit plans and executes Magento to Shopify migrations for retailers who can’t afford downtime, lost data, or lost search rankings during the switch, like Party Expert’s. Here are the questions we’re asked most often.
Customer Success Manager
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Next steps
Party Expert’s migration shows how an established Magento 1 retailer can move to Shopify while preserving customer data, SEO rankings and operational continuity, and come out the other side with a platform that actively drives growth. The right approach starts with a clear, realistic migration plan before any technical work begins.
Best suited for growing B2C retailers on Magento 1 considering Shopify for improved speed, operational simplicity and scalable seasonal commerce.
Want the full picture before you book? Explore our Shopify development services or read more client stories — no form required
More client stories
If Party Expert’s Magento 1 → Shopify migration reflects part of your journey, these case studies show how we support brands across platform migrations, performance optimisation, and long-term ecommerce growth, without compromising business continuity.
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Zero-downtime Magento 1 → Shopware 6 migration
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