F-ONE Ukraine — Magento 1 → Magento 2 Migration for a Global Watersports Brand

We approached the migration in four distinct phases, each with a clear goal and a clean handoff to the next.

Phase 1 — Design Foundation (Spring 2024)

Before touching data, we built the new visual foundation. F-ONE Ukraine needed a frontend that matched the global brand's premium positioning — clean, product-forward, and built for the modern watersports buyer who researches gear on phone and desktop.

We selected Martfury as the base theme and customized it for F-ONE's identity:

• Brand-aligned color palette, typography, and component system

• Category hero treatments for the four sport disciplines (kiteboarding, foiling, wingfoiling, SUP)

• Product page layout designed around F-ONE's rich product imagery and technical specifications

• Mobile-first navigation tuned for watersports buyers researching on the go

The design phase ran in parallel with technical audit work so that data migration mapping had a clear visual target from day one.

Phase 2 — Data Migration (Summer 2024)

With the design direction locked, we moved to the most sensitive phase: migrating 1,000+ products, customer accounts, and order history from Magento 1.9 to a fresh Magento 2.4.8 install.

There's no off-the-shelf migration tool that handles every edge case in a real Magento 1 store — custom attributes, store-specific configurations, EAV inconsistencies accumulated over years. So we built custom migration scripts for F-ONE's exact data shape:

• Product migration with attribute mapping, category trees, and inventory state

• Customer migration with password hash preservation (no forced password resets)

• Order history migration to keep the operational record intact

• Media migration with rebuilt directory structure

• URL preservation strategy — every M1 product and category URL mapped to its M2 equivalent for 301 redirects

All migration ran first on a staging environment, with multiple dry-runs to catch edge cases before going live.

Phase 3 — Launch & Cutover (Late 2024)

The Magento 2.4.8 build was deployed to a Cloud VPS infrastructure sized for F-ONE's traffic profile. Replatform-critical components were in place before cutover:

• OpenSearch replacing Magento 1's legacy search — faster, more accurate faceted filtering across the catalog

• Full Page Cache (Varnish) configured for high-traffic category and product pages

• Redis for session and cache backends

• Cloudflare CDN in front of the origin for global asset delivery

• WebP image conversion + lazy loading for product galleries

• Critical CSS extracted and inlined for above-the-fold rendering

Custom modules built specifically for F-ONE during this phase:

• 3D product visualizer — interactive 3D views for premium product pages where buyers want to inspect gear before purchase

• Custom checkout — streamlined Ukrainian checkout flow tuned for local payment and delivery options

• Installment payments module — "buy now, pay in parts" option integrated with the payment gateway

Local integrations went in alongside the platform launch:

• Nova Poshta — full integration for shipping rates and tracking

• LiqPay — primary payment gateway for the Ukrainian market

The actual cutover took approximately 2 hours, executed during the lowest-traffic window. SEO migration was completed alongside — URL redirect maps, regenerated sitemaps, metadata transfer, and Schema.org product markup added on the new platform.

Phase 4 — Optimization & Ongoing (2025 – Present)

Post-launch, performance work continued. We tuned Core Web Vitals, refined the OpenSearch indexing strategy as the catalog grew, and addressed real-world feedback from the team and customers.

The relationship continues today as occasional engagements — feature additions, performance reviews, and the kind of support a Magento store needs to stay healthy long after launch.