The Pattern Book
Moving From WooCommerce to Shopify
“Our 10-year-old WordPress site was badly in need of an upgrade, and it was only after spotting Business Think’s newsletter that we decided to end our months-long struggle with WordPress plugins and migrate to Shopify. Business Think supported us at every step of the way, providing valuable experience, expertise, and reassurance.
Throughout the process, they assisted with the onboarding and customisation of multiple Shopify apps and sales channels, liaising directly with developers and focusing on our very specific needs — from choosing themes for the site’s design and feel, to configuring tax and currency settings."
The result of our collaboration is a seamless, extremely professional-looking wholesale and retail (B2B and B2C) e-commerce site, which meets the needs of our global customer base — from small retailers to large chains. The power of Shopify’s backend, including its inventory and analytics features, AI bots, and connectivity with third-party apps, means The Pattern Book is now future-proofed and ready to scale when the time comes.” - Nick Crowe at The Pattern Book
The Challenge
This project involved the migration of ten years’ worth of data, including orders, customer accounts, wholesale arrangements, and products/collections.
The scale of the migration required meticulous preparation to ensure that data was transferred to Shopify accurately, while also protecting search engine rankings.
Loss of ranking is a common outcome of any website relaunch, so measures had to be taken to prevent any downturn in traffic.
A new design was proposed and implemented, with a strong focus on improving the user experience — not only for retail customers, but also for wholesale customers, who required unique functionality. This included dedicated logins, pricing, discounting, tailored shipping, alphabetical packing slips with bin numbers, and features such as reordering from previous orders.
With customers spread across four continents, exchange rate controls and location-specific shipping options were essential. Additionally, some products needed to be sold in set increments (e.g., boxes of six), while still allowing for effective stock control of individual SKUs.
A 94% saving on Shopify Plus
Ongoing costs of Shopify’s built-in wholesale package start at $2,300 USD per month (around £1,800), which is unaffordable for most businesses. By using a carefully chosen combination of apps, full wholesale functionality was achieved for just £125 per month — around 6% of the cost of Shopify’s own solution.
This wholesale part of the project was the most challenging — not from a technical perspective, but in ensuring the setup delivered the exact wholesale experience required while also simplifying and enhancing the user journey. Weekly review sessions with Nick were key to getting this right.
Project Summary
The launch of the website was meticulously planned, including a communication strategy to inform thousands of wholesale customers about their newly migrated accounts.
Overall, this was a complex project with many challenges, but it was hugely rewarding to work with Nick and Viv to find solutions. The end result is a scalable, dual-purpose e-commerce site that can take The Pattern Book Press forward for the next ten years. Thank you Nick for trusting Business Think with this project.
This process has helped create a blueprint for any business keen to implement wholesale functionality on Shopify without breaking the bank.