What Usually Goes Wrong

Migrations rarely fail on the export. They fail afterwards, in places that look small until you are living with them:

  • SKUs that almost match, so stock updates silently hit the wrong product
  • Variation structures that eBay allowed and Shopify cannot represent
  • Item specifics dropped entirely because nobody decided where they should go
  • A catalogue that technically arrived but reads like eBay search text
  • Both channels live with split stock, because connecting them was left until last

None of these are exotic. They are the normal consequences of treating a migration as a data transfer.

What We Take On

Scoping against your real catalogue. Not a questionnaire — we look at how your listings are actually structured, where the variations get awkward, and which item specifics carry meaning worth keeping.

The mapping. eBay fields to Shopify fields, including the decisions with no clean answer: which specifics become metafields, which become tags, which are dropped. You approve the mapping before anything runs.

The migration itself. Products, variations, images and the specifics we agreed, moved across in batches so problems surface on twenty products rather than two thousand.

The sync afterwards. Two-way inventory and order sync so both channels carry full stock, rather than you splitting quantities and showing out of stock on one while holding inventory on the other.

AI-assisted listing improvement, if you want it. Titles, item specifics and descriptions drafted from what you already have, so a migrated catalogue does not arrive thin. Everything is reviewed before it publishes — more on how that works.

What Stays With You

Being straightforward about this saves everyone time:

  • Deciding what to sell. We can tell you which SKUs look dead. We cannot tell you which products belong in your business.
  • Brand voice. AI drafts and we map fields, but how your products should sound is yours.
  • Pricing. Marketplace and own-store pricing often differ deliberately. That is a commercial decision.
  • Shopify account, plan and theme. The store itself remains yours.

How It Runs

A conversation first. How many SKUs, how varied, how much of the catalogue is still worth moving, and what is breaking today.

A scope you can read. What we will map, what we will not, what it costs, and how long it takes. Not an open-ended engagement.

A pilot batch. A small set migrated end to end, including a real order flowing through. This is where the surprises appear, and it is far cheaper to find them here.

The full run, then sync. Once the pilot is clean, the rest follows, and the two channels are connected.

Someone to talk to afterwards. Sync failures raise alerts rather than sitting silently, and you have a named contact rather than a ticket queue.

Keep Trading Throughout

You do not go dark during this. eBay keeps selling while the Shopify catalogue is built, and the channels are connected before both are pushed hard. The riskiest window in any migration is the period where both are live but not talking to each other — the sequence above is designed to keep that window short.

Whether This Is Worth It

If you have a few dozen simple products, you may not need help. Shopify's own import tools and a careful afternoon will get you there.

Where this earns its keep is a large or heavily varied catalogue, years of accumulated SKU decisions, or a shop that cannot afford to stop trading. Those are the cases where the manual route quietly consumes weeks.

Tell us about your catalogue and we will tell you honestly which of those you are.