Case Study · Magento 1 Rescue + Redesign

Rescued from end-of-life Magento-
rebuilt on Shopify
for the next decade.

Bubbaroo is a beloved Australian baby brand makers of premium baby pouches, wraps, and accessories trusted by parents across Australia and internationally. Their Magento 1 store had reached end-of-life, leaving the business on unsupported, insecure infrastructure. We migrated them to Shopify and built a brand-new theme that finally matched the warmth and quality of the products.

Magento 1
→ Shopify
AU
Australian brand
Baby
Baby & toddler niche
Full
Full redesign
Live Store Preview

The finished store, live on Shopify

A warm, parent-focused storefront built for mobile - designed to match the quality and care of every Bubbaroo product. Desktop and mobile views of the redesigned store.

Visit bubbaroo.com.au
Bubbaroo desktop
Bubbaroo mobile

A beloved Australian baby brand with a loyal community

Bubbaroo is an Australian baby brand with a genuine following among new parents. They're known for JoJo Baby Pouches, stretchy wraps, and a range of carriers and accessories designed to make babywearing safe, comfortable, and actually enjoyable. They hadn't just built a product range they'd built a community of repeat customers who trusted them.

Their Magento 1 platform had done its job for years. But Magento 1 hit official end-of-life in June 2020. From that point, the store was running on unpatched, unsupported infrastructure processing payment data with no security updates coming. Waiting wasn't an option anymore.

The opportunity was to do this properly: migrate every record cleanly, redesign with intention, and come out the other side with a store that actually matched the warmth and care of the Bubbaroo brand. That's what we built.

Bubbaroo screenshot Homepage - Embelliv.com

Understanding the unique needs of the project

Before we wrote a single line of code, we needed to understand exactly what Bubbaroo was and what this kind of migration would actually involve. Four things shaped every decision we made.

01
A deeply loyal parent community
Bubbaroo's customers aren't casual browsers. They're parents who've trusted the brand, come back for more, and recommend it to friends. Order history, customer accounts, and loyalty data had to land on Shopify completely intact losing any of it would have damaged a relationship years in the making.
02
Baby product UX requirements
Parents buying carriers, wraps, and accessories need more than pretty photos. They need sizing guides, age and weight specs, safety certifications, and how-to-wear guidance all surfaced clearly, without having to dig for it. The new store design was built around that reality.
03
A Magento 1 platform past its sell-by date
Running on end-of-life Magento 1 meant no security patches, no performance improvements, and growing exposure every month. The migration had to happen quickly and cleanly — without pulling the rug out from under a live, trading store.
04
International sales alongside Australian domestic
Bubbaroo sells to parents in Australia, New Zealand, the UK, and beyond. The new Shopify store needed multi-currency display, accurate international shipping rates, and a checkout that didn't feel foreign to buyers outside Australia.

Four serious risks that made migration urgent

Bubbaroo had the brand, the products, and the customers. The platform was the problem. These were the four core issues we were brought in to fix.

Security
End-of-life platform: a ticking clock
Magento 1 stopped receiving security patches. Running a live store that processes payment data on unpatched infrastructure isn't a calculated risk it's a liability. The migration wasn't optional. It was overdue.
Data
Customer & order data preservation
Years of purchase history, customer accounts, and loyalty records sat on that Magento 1 database. Any data loss during the move would have broken the trust Bubbaroo had spent years building with its parent community. We didn't lose a record.
Design
The store hadn't kept pace with the brand
The Magento theme was dated and underperforming on mobile where the bulk of young parent traffic arrives. The brand's warmth and quality weren't coming through online. A full custom theme build was needed, not a patch job.
Mobile
Mobile experience lagging behind the audience
Australian parents browse and buy on their phones. Often one-handed, often with a baby. The existing mobile experience was slow, hard to navigate, and wasn't converting at the rate the brand deserved. That had to change.

A clean migration and a brand-new store

The brief was clear: get Bubbaroo off end-of-life infrastructure without losing a single customer record, then build a store that does the brand justice. We've done over 100 migrations since becoming a Shopify Partner in 2017 each phase here was planned to eliminate risk at every step, not just the last one.

Phase 01
Magento 1 Data Audit & Migration Planning
We did a complete inventory of everything on the Magento 1 platform: products, variants, customer accounts, order history, loyalty points, CMS pages, and blog content. From that we built a migration plan covering data transformation requirements, staging environment setup, and a cutover timeline that kept the store trading throughout.
Phase 02
New Theme Design for the Bubbaroo Brand
We started with a warm, parent-focused visual direction. Clean layouts with breathing room, strong product photography, and a UX built around how parents actually shop for baby products: reassurance first, then conversion. Key page templates were wireframed and signed off before we touched a build file. Our store design process always starts here.
Phase 03
Shopify 2.0 Theme Development
The custom Shopify 2.0 theme was built on a staging environment first. Flexible sections, baby-product-specific page templates with sizing guides, safety certifications and how-to-wear content blocks, and a mobile-first layout designed for one-handed use. Our theme development team handled every template from scratch.
Phase 04
Data Migration
Products with all variants, images, and metafields, customer accounts, order history, and CMS content all migrated in a staged process and validated on staging before any production transfer happened. Every product's age recommendations, weight range, and safety data were preserved exactly as they were. Nothing was lost, nothing was guessed.
Phase 05
301 Redirects, SEO & App Integration
We crawled the full Magento 1 URL structure and built a redirect map covering every product and collection page. That map was implemented in Shopify before launch day. Core apps loyalty programme, review platform, and email marketing were configured and tested. A pre-launch SEO audit confirmed all redirects and metadata were correct before we flipped the switch.
Phase 06
Launch, Training & Post-Launch Support
DNS cutover was managed as a low-risk, staged event. The Bubbaroo team got hands-on training covering product management, order processing, and content updates in their new Shopify admin. We monitored the first 72 hours post-launch to catch anything before it could affect customers. That's what post-launch support actually looks like.

Four things that made the biggest difference

The migration and redesign gave Bubbaroo a secure, modern Shopify store that finally represents the brand properly. Here are the four areas that moved the needle most. You can see similar results in our portfolio, including other Magento migrations like Lumination.

01 - Migration
Clean exit from end-of-life Magento 1
We moved Bubbaroo from unsupported infrastructure to Shopify without a single customer record lost and without trading downtime. The platform risk that had been building for years was gone in one well-planned cutover. That's what our migration service is built to do.
02 — Design
A store that finally reflects the brand
Warm, parent-focused, and genuinely built for mobile. The new Shopify theme matches the care and quality in every Bubbaroo product. It's not just better looking it converts at the rate the brand always deserved. Our store design work on this project showed exactly what's possible when design and migration happen together.
03 — Mobile
Mobile-first for one-handed parent browsing
Every page template was designed and tested for one-handed mobile use. Because parents shopping for baby products are often literally holding a baby. Fast, clear, and frictionless on every screen size performance-optimised from the ground up.
04 - Data
Full customer & order history preserved
Every customer account, order record, and loyalty point transferred cleanly. Existing customers logged into their new Shopify accounts on launch day without a hitch. The relationship Bubbaroo had built with its community was fully intact on the other side.
100%
Customer records transferred without loss
Zero
Trading downtime during migration
M1
Magento 1 → Shopify platform migration completed
Mobile
Theme designed for parent audiences

Built on the right foundation

Every technology choice here was made to eliminate the risks that had accumulated under Magento 1 and to give Bubbaroo a platform that can grow with the brand for the next decade, not just the next year.

Shopify
Replaced end-of-life Magento 1 with a fully supported, PCI-compliant platform with a best-in-class app ecosystem eliminating the security and maintenance burden that had built up under the old platform.
Shopify 2.0 Custom Theme
A bespoke baby-brand theme built with flexible sections, custom baby-product page templates, and a warm visual language designed around the Bubbaroo brand identity.
Metafields
Product metafields used to store and display age ranges, weight specifications, safety certification data, and how-to-wear content giving parents the reassurance information they need without cluttering the main product description.
Loyalty & Reviews App Integration
The loyalty programme and review app were re-integrated on Shopify existing point balances and review data came across intact, and both were placed more prominently in the new theme. Customers didn't lose their history. They just got a better experience with it.
301 Redirect Mapping
Full URL redirect architecture built from a complete Magento 1 site crawl — preserving organic search equity across product and collection pages. Protecting SEO during a migration is part of our standard process. It's not an add-on. Check our Shopify SEO service for more on how we handle this.
Multi-Currency & International Shipping
Shopify's native multi-currency and international shipping configuration set up for Bubbaroo's Australian, New Zealand, UK, and international customer base — with local currency display and accurate shipping rate presentation at checkout.

What our clients say about working with us

View all on Shopify
★★★★★

"Axis Web Art developed our website. They are easy to work with, thorough, and responsive. We have been very happy with their service."

GL
Garrett Leather
Roberta Sand, Marketing Director
★★★★★

"Great work, they know how to change your theme effectively without any issues. Fixed a few tiny issues moments after identifying them. Always a pleasure to work with this team of highly skilled players."

TC
Timothy
Founder, Timothy De Clue Collection
★★★★★

"We crafted a soothing online shopping experience for Bubbaroo, a leading Australian baby sleep bag brand. Our Shopify store design and development focused on safety, comfort, and parent peace of mind."

BU
Bubbaroo
Nicole Cassey, Founder
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