# Event Network: Magento 2 → Shopify

Case study · Magento 2 → Shopify migration

I led the company's move of its storefronts for museums, zoos and cultural attractions from Magento 2 to Shopify: the data model, the SEO redirect map, the integrations and the cutover.

- Role: Senior Lead Magento 2 Developer
- Where: Event Network, 2021–2025
- Stack: Magento 2, Shopify, REST & GraphQL APIs, ERP & POS integrations, SEO redirect mapping

## Context

Event Network ran 18 Magento 2 storefronts for museums, zoos and cultural attractions, all tied into ERP and point-of-sale integrations that I had built and maintained. When the company decided to move from Magento 2 to Shopify, I led the migration.

## The challenge

A Magento 2 to Shopify migration is not an export and an import. The two platforms model a store differently, so every product, customer and order has to be translated, not copied. Years of search rankings hang on URLs that Shopify will not reproduce. The ERP and POS integrations that kept in-store and online inventory in sync had to keep working on the new platform. And the switch itself had to happen without losing orders.

## What I did

**Data-model mapping.** I mapped Magento's catalog to Shopify's: Magento's attribute-based (EAV) product data, configurable products and their child simples into Shopify products with options and variants, attributes that had no native home into metafields, and categories into collections. Customers and order history were mapped the same way, field by field.

**SEO redirect map.** Magento URLs, including category paths and URL rewrites, do not survive the move, because Shopify uses fixed paths such as /products/ and /collections/. I built the redirect map from old URLs to new so search rankings and inbound links carried over.

**Integrations.** I led the integrations workstream, so that inventory, orders and fulfillment kept flowing between the shops and the online stores once they ran on Shopify.

**Cutover.** I led the cutover: the order of operations, the final data sync, redirects in place and the switch itself.

## Outcome

I led Event Network's move of its storefronts for museums, zoos and cultural attractions from Magento 2 to Shopify, across the data model, SEO, integrations and cutover. Two of the best-known, the Obama Foundation's and the American Museum of Natural History's ([shop.obama.org](https://shop.obama.org) and [shop.amnh.org](https://shop.amnh.org)), run on Shopify today. It is the same approach I use on independent [Magento to Shopify migrations](https://www.michael-kuhlman.com/magento-to-shopify-migration).

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