So Called Crew: a WooCommerce to Shopify migration in 10 working days, selling from day one

Who So Called Crew are

So Called Crew is an underground hip-hop collective from Sofia: Gena on the beats, Zhluch and Grigovor on the rhymes. It started as two compilations, became a rap group in several line-ups, and is now a platform for independent Bulgarian music with its own studio in the centre of the city. They sold their records and merch through a WooCommerce store that had become slow to run and slow to change.

The brief: off WooCommerce before the campaign

The crew had a release campaign on the calendar and did not want to launch it on the old store. The ask was a move from WooCommerce to Shopify, fast enough to be live before the campaign went out, with nothing lost on the way: every record, every size, every order and every URL fans had bookmarked or shared.

And it had to feel like the crew, not like a merch template. Black, loud, in Bulgarian first, with the music and the shows as much a part of the site as the shop, and simple enough for three people to run from their phones between studio sessions.

Ten working days, start to selling

We scoped the migration to what the campaign needed and nothing else. Day one was the export: products, variants, images, customers and orders out of WooCommerce and into Shopify, with the catalogue cleaned up on the way through. The theme was designed and built in parallel, and the old URLs were mapped to their new homes so search rankings and shared links carried over. The store went live on the tenth working day, and the first orders came in the same day it opened.

What we built

A Horizon theme made for a crew, not a catalogue

The store runs on a custom build of Shopify's Horizon theme. The homepage opens on live footage from a show, then moves through the latest drops, the next event with a ticket link, a listen section with every streaming platform, and the labels the crew's records are also available from. Nothing on it is a stock block left on its defaults.

Records, clothing and tickets under one roof

The catalogue mixes formats: double vinyl on coloured and clear 180-gram pressings, CDs, EPs, tees, a long sleeve and the SCC windbreaker. Sold-out releases stay on the page as part of the discography instead of disappearing, so the shop doubles as the crew's archive. An albums page lists every release, and an events page sends fans straight to tickets.

Bulgarian first, English second

The site is written in Bulgarian and translated into English through Shopify's markets and translations, with a language switch in the header and prices in euro. Product titles keep their original Bulgarian names in both languages, because that is what the records are called.

The studio as a service

So Called Crew also work for other artists: composing, producing, recording, lyrics, mix and master. The studio page describes the room and takes enquiries through a form, so the store brings in session work as well as sales.

Results

• WooCommerce to Shopify in 10 working days, live before the campaign.
• Selling from the day it launched, with the catalogue, customers and orders carried across.
• One place to buy the records, the clothing and the tickets, in Bulgarian and English.
• A store the crew updates themselves from the theme editor and the Shopify app.

How it is built

Shopify with a custom Horizon theme, a WooCommerce export mapped into Shopify products, customers and orders, 301 redirects for every old URL, Shopify Markets for the English storefront and euro pricing, a contact form for studio enquiries, and standard Shopify checkout.