A Quebec-based distributor of outdoor power equipment and parts since 1974, Équipements ESF moved from Magento to Shopify Plus with Junifia. The result: a B2B store connected directly to its ERP, far cheaper to maintain, and now preferred by dealers over the phone.

Charles Gauthier of Équipements ESF on the migration

The challenge: a platform that cost a lot without moving the business forward

Équipements ESF is one of Canada’s largest distributors of outdoor power equipment. The family business, founded in 1974, offers more than 140,000 products to a network of dealers across the country.

For years, its online store ran on Magento. Over time, the platform slowed down ESF’s web development and kept its B2B customers from shopping on the site.

Even small design changes required development work and were expensive. And every year, ESF had to fund a platform upgrade project. Those projects mostly patched security vulnerabilities: necessary, but adding no new value for customers.

The web budget went into keeping the site alive instead of improving it. Meanwhile, customers kept ordering by phone, which accounted for about 90% of orders.

“Our old platform made every update slow and extremely expensive.”

The solution: a full Shopify migration and a custom ERP connector

ESF brought in Junifia to migrate its entire store from Magento to Shopify Plus. The goal was twofold: give dealers an online buying experience that beats picking up the phone, and break the cycle of expensive upgrades.

A B2B store built for dealers. Junifia rebuilt the buying experience on Shopify Plus, with the full catalog, customer accounts, and an ordering flow designed for resellers.

A custom connector between the ERP and Shopify. At the core of the project is a backend connector built by Junifia that moves data between ESF’s ERP and the store. The connector is monitored around the clock: if anything breaks between Shopify and the ERP, the team is alerted in under five minutes and can act before customers notice.

AI to build faster. Junifia uses AI throughout its own development process, which lets the team ship faster without compromising the quality or reliability of the integration.

More autonomy day to day. On Shopify, changes that used to require a development project now happen much faster. Launching a new product line online takes 3 to 4 days, compared with about 45 days before.

The results: less maintenance, far more online orders

60% lower costs. Excluding new projects, site maintenance and hosting costs dropped by 60% compared with Magento. No more annual upgrade projects: Shopify handles the platform, hosting, and security.

The web became the main channel. Before the migration, about 10% of orders came through the website. Today it’s 60%, versus 25% by phone. Fewer orders keyed in by hand means more time for the team and fewer errors.

Growth every year. Since launching on Shopify, online sales and revenue have grown every single year.

“Today, we move much faster. We’re far more efficient, we’ve eliminated a lot of manual work and increased the number of orders we receive each month through our website.”

What’s next: a web budget that builds

The budget ESF used to spend on Magento upgrades now funds new projects that create value.

Next up: keeping pace with how commerce is changing, including agentic commerce, where AI agents discover, compare, and buy products on behalf of buyers. With more than 140,000 products and well-structured data in Shopify, ESF starts with a head start, for example to be discoverable through Shopify’s Catalog API.