Ashford

Migrating an Eight-Figure Luxury Retailer from Magento to Shopify Plus

The Challenge

Ashford.com is a long-established leader in luxury watches and accessories, trusted by global customers for both authenticity and value. But after years of operating on Magento, their technology stack had become a liability. Maintaining and extending Magento required heavy development resources and frequent manual work, creating operational drag that was unsustainable for an eight-figure brand with global ambitions.

The platform limited site speed and user experience, making it harder to compete in an increasingly competitive luxury ecommerce space. Essential integrations like NetSuite, Sellercloud, and Global-e added complexity, while promotional and merchandising requirements pushed Magento to its limits. Ashford also needed to improve cross-border commerce capabilities to serve customers in Asia and beyond, all while protecting existing workflows and minimizing disruption.

Eric Paul, EVP at Ashford, explained it simply in his testimonial: “The team has been great to work with and has made the whole migration and upgrade process very smooth and uneventful (in a good way).” That sense of stability during such a significant technical shift was mission-critical.

Project Goals

• Platform Migration: Migrate from Magento to Shopify Plus, leveraging native functionality and the broader Shopify ecosystem for long-term scalability.
• Promotions & Merchandising Continuity: Preserve Ashford’s mission-critical promotional and merchandising logic while upgrading user experience and performance.
• Enterprise Systems Integration: Establish robust integrations with NetSuite, Sellercloud, and Global-e for inventory, fulfillment, and international commerce.
• Search, Filtering & Navigation: Improve usability and navigation with enterprise-level search and filtering.
• Data Migration & Integrity: Seamlessly transition product data, customer accounts, and order histories without compromising data integrity.
• Workflow Automation: Automate key workflows to reduce manual overhead and free up team capacity.
• On-Time, On-Budget Delivery: Deliver on time and on budget to avoid disruption to ongoing business.

Our Plan

We developed a plan that balanced speed to market with long-term extensibility. By working from a boilerplate based on Shopify’s flagship theme, we reduced design overhead while giving Ashford a stable and extensible base. Customizations were layered strategically, ensuring that every feature added clear business value.

Global Elements: Navigation and trust signals are paramount for luxury ecommerce. We designed a multi-tier megamenu with mobile-friendly expand/collapse functionality, always-visible search, and utility menus to streamline browsing. A new superfooter included credibility badges, newsletter signup, and social integrations, reinforcing trust at scale.

Product Data and Templates: Luxury products require nuanced presentation. We restructured Ashford’s product data model using Shopify metafields and metaobjects, enabling grouped specifications, conditional display logic, and automatic linking to collections. Product detail pages were enhanced with brand-aware linking, reviews integration, specialized pricing displays with percentage-off calculations, and pay-over-time messaging via Shopify Installments. PDPs also included contextual notes for shipping, stock, and product origins, ensuring transparency.

Product Listing and Search: On product listing pages, we introduced brand-specific templates and custom promotional callouts. Advanced faceted search was delivered using Shopify’s Search & Discovery app, configured to support attributes such as case width, dial color, movement type, and lens protection. This level of granularity allowed Ashford customers to navigate a vast catalog with ease, improving both discoverability and conversion rates.

Promotions and Discounts: For a retailer like Ashford, promotions are a core revenue driver. Frontend customization supports both visibility and pre-checkout application of various promotions. Admin-controlled and best-fit promotions are shown with products in the PLP product grid and on the PDP. Coupon codes can be added with a single click from the PDP and in cart. Discounted pricing is displayed within the cart and additional coupon codes may be added from the flyout cart. We implemented Regios Automatic Discounts to support complex promotional structures, including multifaceted discount rules (multiple discounts applied via the same coupon code), a large-scale, dynamic affiliate coupon database, SKU-based and fixed pricing.

Apps and Integrations: Ashford’s operations rely on a suite of enterprise-level tools. We integrated Shopify Plus with NetSuite for product and order flows, Sellercloud for inventory and fulfillment, and Global-e for cross-border commerce. Klaviyo was activated for marketing automation, Avalara for tax compliance, Gorgias for customer service, and SiteJabber for customer reviews. Data migration and transformation were handled using Matrixify, enabling bulk import of complex product structures and preserving order and customer data.

Internationalization: Global expansion was a key priority. Global-e was implemented to manage currencies, tax, and localized checkout for markets including South Korea, Hong Kong, Mainland China, and Taiwan. Shopify’s Translate & Adapt app supported multi-language content, starting with Chinese and Korean. This foundation gave Ashford the ability to deliver localized shopping experiences without splitting infrastructure across multiple storefronts.

Data Migration and SEO: We executed a comprehensive migration strategy to move products, categories, customers, and order history from Magento. Data was cleaned and mapped to Shopify’s structure, with special care taken to preserve SEO value through 301 redirects and schema markup. Blog content was migrated, transactional emails were redesigned, and store credit balances were transitioned seamlessly.

Training and Documentation: Ashford’s team was trained through live screenshare sessions, with recordings saved to a private library. A living documentation system was created to capture custom data structures, integrations, and workflows. This technical blueprint ensures long-term maintainability and accelerates onboarding for new staff.