Challenge: Trailhead Paddle Shack is an Ottawa outdoor retail institution and Canada's premier paddling and outdoor gear specialty store. Its roots go back to 1976, when the original Trailhead opened. In 2011 and 2012, Paddle Shack (founded in 2001 by Jason Yarrington) took over the store and combined the two. Today the Carling Avenue shop is open seven days a week, with a catalog of over 35,000 SKUs spanning paddling, camping, hiking, and winter sports, plus apparel and footwear.
The business was running Lightspeed Ecom and Lightspeed Retail (POS) as two separate systems. Instead of one source of truth, the team had two, and keeping them in agreement took constant manual effort:
- Invoice & Inventory Discrepancies: Records didn't match between Lightspeed Ecom and Lightspeed Retail. At times, online orders never appeared in the POS at all.
- No Unified Discounting: Online and in-store promotions had to be managed separately, which led to inconsistencies and made more creative offers too complex to set up.
- Extra Manual Workflows: Staff needed additional manual steps to keep data accurate, and even in-store pickup (BOPIS) orders had to be double-checked.
- Limited Room to Extend: Admin-heavy processes like purchase orders, product creation, and labeling had little room for automation across a catalog this large.
- High Stakes for a Big Catalog: With 35,000+ SKUs and years of search visibility behind them, a poorly handled migration could have meant lost sales and lost rankings.
Trailhead needed one reliable commerce system, and an expert partner who could migrate a 35,000+ SKU catalog and rebuild their website without interrupting business or losing search visibility.
Solution:
Matagora led a complete Lightspeed-to-Shopify replatforming, covering the data migration, the website build, and a full onboarding onto Shopify ecommerce and Shopify POS. Key steps included:
- Full Website Build: Matagora took on the website build, moving Trailhead off Lightspeed Ecom and onto a new Shopify ecommerce store.
- Zero-Downtime Data Migration: Matagora's team handled the full migration of the 35,000+ SKU catalog without interrupting business, so Trailhead didn't have to take on the work, risk, and stress internally.
- SEO-Safe Transition: The migration was planned to protect Trailhead's existing search rankings, so years of organic visibility carried over to the new store.
- Unified Ecommerce + POS Build: Online and in-store sales, inventory, and discounts now run through a single Shopify system.
- Optimized Checkout: The new Shopify checkout streamlines the online buying experience, including Shop App checkout for returning customers.
- Flexible Admin Setup: Design changes can be made in the Shopify admin without code, scheduled to go live at a set time, and tested first in a dev store without touching the live site.
- Extensible Foundation: Shopify's app ecosystem and openness allowed the team to connect the free Stockroom app and their own in-house AI tooling.
Team Feedback:
"We absolutely love the true unified commerce of Shopify. Sales from any channel are always accurate, and the admin dashboard is always accurate. We don't have to double-check anything. No regrets whatsoever!" — Trailhead Paddle Shack team
"We loved being able to outsource the data migration to a professional team like Matagora rather than take on that stress and anxiety internally. It was a huge relief."
"I would tell anybody still on Lightspeed to get off and onto Shopify ASAP. You're falling way behind."
Outcome:
✅ 37% Higher Conversion Rate: In the four months since launch, Trailhead's conversion rate rose from 1.41% to 1.93%, compared with the same period the year before. More visitors are becoming customers on the new Shopify store.
✅ Zero Downtime: The full migration was completed without interrupting day-to-day business.
✅ SEO Rankings Preserved: Years of search visibility across the catalog carried through the move intact.
✅ ~40 Hours Saved Every Week: The free Stockroom app, connected to Trailhead's in-house AI, automated purchase order workflows, new product creation, and labeling. That saves roughly 40 hours a week across the office, which wasn't possible on Lightspeed.
✅ One Discount, Every Channel: Promotions are set once and apply to both the website and POS. Offers that were too complex before, like "buy 3 pairs of socks, get the 4th free," are now simple. The team also built an in-house tool to automate discount scheduling.
✅ Accurate Inventory & BOPIS: Store pickup orders are now always accurate, with no more double-checking as there was on Lightspeed.
✅ Faster, More Accurate Fulfillment: The shipping and receiving team reports a more accurate, efficient workflow for fulfillment, label creation, and automated return emails.
✅ Intuitive POS Experience: Floor staff found Shopify POS fluid, intuitive, and easy to learn, with little to no training required. Checkout is smoother and more feature-rich.
✅ No-Code Design Control: Small visual updates no longer require a developer, and scheduled changes plus a dev store make updates low-risk.
✅ Additional Sales via Shop App: The team is seeing a few extra sales from the Shop App.
Takeaways:
- Large Catalogs Need a Careful Migration Strategy: Moving 35,000+ SKUs without downtime or lost search rankings takes planning, not just a data transfer.
- A Better Storefront Converts Better: Pairing a careful migration with a new Shopify website and streamlined checkout lifted conversion from 1.41% to 1.93% year over year.
- Unified Commerce Ends the Double-Checking: When sales from every channel land in one accurate system, staff stop reconciling data and start serving customers.
- An Open Ecosystem Multiplies Efficiency: Shopify's apps and extensibility let Trailhead automate admin work and connect their own AI tooling, saving about 40 hours a week.
For a retailer with a history going back to 1976, the right platform should simplify the day-to-day, not complicate it, and a migration should protect what's been built along the way. Trailhead's team would recommend Shopify to any Lightspeed retailer, and Matagora to lead the move. If your team is stuck reconciling separate systems or worried about migrating a large catalog, get in touch with us to see how a Shopify migration can give you the same clarity.
