- Client
- Straight To Hell Apparel
- Platform
- WooCommerce
- Industry
- Apparel & Leather Goods
- Scope
- Magento 1 → WooCommerce migration + theme
- Live site
- straighttohellapparel.com
Straight To Hell has been making leather jackets, denim and music-culture apparel in Chicago since 2009 — a brand with a following loyal enough to ship worldwide on reputation alone. Their store ran on Magento 1, and when that platform reached end of life, security patches stopped and every day online became a growing risk. We moved them to WooCommerce with a fully custom theme.
The Challenge: End-of-Life Platform, Very-Much-Alive Brand
A Magento 1 store in the post-support era is a liability with a checkout. But the replatforming choice isn't automatic — it's a business-size question:
- Magento 2 suits complex catalogues and B2B logic — at real rebuild and hosting cost
- WooCommerce suits a focused D2C catalogue run by a small team — familiar WordPress admin, huge ecosystem, modest running costs
- Either way, catalogue, customers and order history had to survive the crossing intact
We build on both platforms, which keeps this advice honest: the right migration target is the one that matches your catalogue complexity and team, not the one your agency happens to sell.
What We Built
The Migration
We mapped Magento 1's catalogue — configurable products, size/colour variants, categories — onto WooCommerce's model, migrated customers and order history, and laid 301 redirects across the URL structure so years of search equity followed the store. It is the same discipline that runs through all our eCommerce development: the data map comes first, the theme second.
A Custom Theme With the Brand's Voice
Straight To Hell's audience would smell a generic template instantly. The custom WooCommerce theme keeps the brand's monochrome, music-scene aesthetic — photography-led product pages, fit guidance for investment purchases, and the free-shipping and returns promises surfaced where a hesitant buyer needs them.
The Technology Stack
- WooCommerce on WordPress — a D2C store the in-house team runs day to day
- Custom theme — brand-first design, variant-heavy product templates
- Migration tooling — catalogue, customer and order transfer from Magento 1 with full redirect mapping
- Worldwide shipping logic — US free-shipping thresholds and international rates
For a retail brand of this shape — deep identity, focused catalogue, lean team — WooCommerce is usually the right home after Magento 1. The store keeps its soul; the team keeps its sanity.
Still Running a Legacy Store?
If you're on an end-of-life platform, every month is borrowed time — but the destination deserves a real decision, not a default. Talk to our engineering team: we'll tell you honestly whether your store belongs on WooCommerce, Magento 2 or something else, within a business day.