Migrating to a new Shopify store, and you sell firearms. Migrate everything to a new Shopify store.
You are moving to a new Shopify account — whether because a payment processor cut you off, you are restructuring your business, or you simply need a fresh start. The email to yourself feels straightforward: export the old store, import into the new one, done. Here is what actually happens. Shopify's own CSV export cannot carry metafields, metaobjects, orders, gift card codes, videos, themes, menus, discounts or redirects. Those things exist in your store right now. They will not come with you on their own. Even when data does move, reference-type metafields copied naively will still point at objects in the old store, so pages render with sections silently empty — your customer sees a broken layout and you do not know why. This is not a failure of process. It is the real shape of the problem. The only way through is to move deliberately, then run the whole migration a second time and compare counts — products, orders, customers, redirects, all of it — so you know what is actually missing before you flip the switch.
Move all of it into a new store, from $247
One-time packages, no per-record metering, no quotes. The order form unlocks the moment you pay, counts are matched against your old store, and the entire migration then runs a second time — the second pass has to create nothing.
What you are looking at
- CSV export sits in your email, but it contains only SKUs, prices, handles and text fields — no images, no metafields, no order history, no discounts
- The new store builds, products look half-finished, and redirects are gone so search traffic drops immediately
- Gift card codes you issued do not appear anywhere, and no one can tell you how to get them back
- Reference metafields that pointed to collections or pages now point at nothing, leaving theme sections blank
- Custom menus you spent hours building are not there, so navigation is broken
The real urgency is data loss, not speed. A reference-type metafield pointing at the old store will stay broken once you flip traffic to the new one, and by then fixing it means downtime. The genuine deadline is the period before you go live — you must validate everything works while you still have both stores running and can check the old one. After cutover, the old store is usually deleted and there is no way back.
Why it happened — specifically for firearms
Stripe, the processor behind Shopify Payments, lists firearms and weapons as restricted with limited availability. The primary trigger is that you are selling a product category Stripe does not underwrite by default. The secondary trigger is the shipping model: if your checkout does not enforce FFL-to-FFL transfers or state-level geo-blocking, you fail the underwriting before it even reaches compliance review. Stripe's policy is that lawful retail is boardable only through specialists, and only if you can prove licensing and workflow controls.
Rule out the easy fix first — then deal with the real one
Rule this out first, because Shopify documents no route for firearms. What merchants try is applying to Shopify Payments anyway, citing their FFL license—and that fails because the restriction is structural to Stripe's risk model, not a licensing question. The path that sometimes works is to find a high-risk acquirer who specializes in 2A retail, apply with documented proof of your FFL, state resale licenses, and a shipping workflow that enforces dealer-to-dealer transfers. That application is permission to apply only; the acquirer runs their own underwriting on your catalog, your state compliance and your processing history. Most declines at that stage come from either inadequate proof or a shipping model that does not enforce FFL gates.
It only helps if all of these are true:
- You hold a current, verifiable FFL license in a US state.
- Your checkout or fulfillment system enforces FFL-to-FFL transfers or state geo-blocking.
- You can document that you do not ship to prohibited states or persons.
- Your product catalog does not include fully automatic weapons, which are federally prohibited for civilian retail.
- You have no prior payment processing declines or chargebacks tied to weapons or compliance.
If any one of them does not hold, you are where everyone else on this page is: you need a store built around a gateway that will actually accept you — and everything you have built has to move into it without losing the catalog, the customers, the order history or the rankings.
What this means for a business like yours
🎯 Weapons or weapon-adjacent, with state-by-state legality
Your geo-blocking rules live in your product catalog, not in Shopify's core settings, which means they do not move in a standard export. Every product or variant that is restricted by state or country has to be either manually re-blocked in the new store or moved via a third-party tool that understands your restriction matrix. If you use metafields to tag products by legality—'CA banned', 'Federal OK', 'state-specific'—those fields copy over, but the blocking logic that reads them does not. You will need to either rebuild the app or find one that can read your old tagging scheme. Test a restricted sale from a banned jurisdiction before you go live, because a single order shipped to the wrong state is not a chargeback problem—it is a legal problem. Plan this part separately from the rest of the migration.
💎 High average order value, so fraud and disputes cost more per event
A single dispute or fraud event on a high-value order is material to your reserve and your processing relationship, so your new store's fraud rules—velocity checks, address matching, 3D Secure settings—must be configured before you migrate traffic, not after. Those rules live in your payment processor, not in Shopify, so they do not move automatically. Confirm your processor has copied your rule set to the new gateway account. Also confirm that your address verification and CVV matching rules are identical between old and new, because a sudden drop in fraud detection or a change in decline thresholds will show up immediately in your dispute rate. High-value orders attract more scrutiny from underwriters, so any hiccup in fraud screening during migration looks like a control failure. Test a high-value transaction on the new store before you cut over, using the same card type and geography as your typical customer.
📦 Thousands of SKUs, deep variant matrices, distributor feeds
Your metafields and metaobjects do not travel in Shopify's CSV export, which means any custom data—size matrices, distributor stock levels, compliance tags, pricing rules—either gets rebuilt by hand or gets lost. For a catalog of thousands of SKUs, hand-rebuild is impossible. You need a migration tool or script that can read your metafield schema from the old store and write it to the new one, field by field. Also watch for reference-type metafields that point to other products or collections: if they are copied naively, they still point at objects in the old store, so pages render with sections silently empty. Your distributor feeds—if they push data to product fields—will also break during migration because the feed is configured against the old store's API endpoints. Before you migrate, audit which custom fields are reference-type and which are populated by external feeds, then arrange for those to be re-pointed or rebuilt on day one. A catalog-heavy store that loses reference resolution looks live but serves broken pages.
What you actually have to fix
Underwriters do not change their minds because you asked. They change them because the facts changed. For firearms, these are the facts that move the decision:
Document your FFL licensing and state-level shipping controls.
This is the single highest-yield fix because it is the thing specialists cannot board without. Gather your current FFL license copy, any state resale permits, and a written or technical description of how your checkout or fulfillment enforces dealer-to-dealer transfers. If you are hand-shipping and relying on customer honesty, you will be declined. If you use an FFL-network platform (GunBroker model, for example), document that integration. Underwriters need to see the gate, not just hear that you respect it.
Audit your product descriptions for state-prohibited items.
Remove or geo-block any products that are prohibited in states where you currently ship or where your checkout does not block them. This includes fully automatic weapons (federally prohibited for civilian sale), short-barreled rifles where state law prohibits them, and any other weapons your state restricts. Create a state-by-state compliance grid showing which products you sell in which states, and which states you have completely blocked. Underwriters will cross-check this against your fulfillment data.
Remove any marketing language that flags age-gating failures.
If your product pages or checkout imply that minors can purchase (no age verification gate, no disclaimer language, or marketing that targets under-18 audiences), fix that before applying. Firearms have federal age limits: rifles and shotguns 18+, handguns 21+. Make sure your checkout enforces age verification (either manual review or a third-party age-gate service), and that your product pages clearly state the age requirement. Underwriters will scan for this instantly.
Compile your processing history and chargebacks to be transparent.
If you have been declined by Shopify Payments, Stripe, or any other processor, or if you have a history of chargebacks or disputes, gather those records now. Specialist acquirers run background checks on processing history, and declining to mention a prior decline will cause them to decline you again for misrepresentation. If your history is clean, state that plainly. If it is not, explain what happened and what you have fixed since then.
What underwriting will ask you for
- Copy of your current FFL license and any state resale or dealer permits.
- Proof of your shipping and transfer workflow—screenshots of your checkout, fulfillment instructions to customers, or integration with an FFL-network platform.
- Your product catalog with images, descriptions and any age-gate or compliance language.
- Bank statements for the last 3–6 months showing lawful business revenue.
- Processing history from any prior payment processor, including reason codes for any declines.
- State-by-state compliance checklist showing which states you ship to and which you block.
- Your business formation documents and UBO (Ultimate Beneficial Owner) verification.
Getting underwritten for firearms
High-risk acquiring is an entire industry that exists for businesses Stripe declines, and several of them publicly underwrite firearms. What none of them will tell you up front is the number that actually matters: what your business gets offered, once they have seen your volume, your claims and your history. Rate, reserve and settlement terms vary enormously between applicants in the same category.
Get real quotes from high-risk processors that accept firearms
Six taps and three details. We put it in front of the high-risk acquirers that actually underwrite your category and come back with what they will offer you — rate, reserve and settlement terms — so you are comparing real numbers instead of cold-emailing brokers for a fortnight.
The recovery playbook
- Audit what your store actually containsList everything that matters: products, orders, customers, discounts, redirects, gift cards, navigation menus, theme choice, metafields and metaobjects. Do not assume you know. Log into your current store and count. Orders and gift card codes will not export through CSV — you will need those lists for manual verification later. Make a spreadsheet with baseline numbers for every category. This is the document you will compare against in step 5.
- Get a verified copy of your store out while you still have access — todayBefore you create the new account, request a full backup from Shopify support in case something goes wrong. This is the step people skip, and it is the only one with a deadline you do not control. A migration is not an instant thing — it can take days or weeks, and you will still have the old store running. But the moment you delete it, a full backup becomes impossible. If a metafield is misconfigured in the new store, or a theme does not carry over, or reference data points nowhere, you may need to look at the old store to understand why. Once it is gone, that information is gone. Backups are the only insurance you have.
- Export and move what CSV can carry, manually handle what it cannotRun Shopify's CSV export. It will contain products, variants, prices, handles and text fields. It will not contain metafields, metaobjects, orders, gift card codes, videos, themes, navigation menus, discounts or redirects. Move the CSV into the new store. Then handle the missing categories one by one: metafields must be recreated (some third-party apps can help, but none are universal); orders must be exported from reports as a separate archive; gift card codes cannot be read through any Shopify API and must be re-issued; videos and media must be re-uploaded; themes must be selected and configured again; navigation menus must be rebuilt; discounts must be recreated; redirects must be re-entered or exported from a third-party SEO app if you used one.
- Check reference metafields point to the new store, not the old oneIf you use reference-type metafields — fields that link to collections, pages, products or other objects — those references will still point at the old store after migration. Pages will render with sections blank or broken. You must systematically update each reference to point at the equivalent object in the new store. If a metafield references a collection called 'Summer Dresses', find that collection in the new store and re-link it. This is tedious. There is no way around it. Skipping it is why new stores launch with invisible sections.
- Run the migration again, count everything, and compareBefore you go live, treat this as a full second migration. Export the old store's data again. Import it into the new store again, overwriting what is there, so you capture any changes made in the old store since you started. Then count: products in old store versus new store, orders in old store versus new store, customers, redirects, discounts, everything. If all counts match, you have moved what can be moved and you know what is missing. If a count does not match, find out why before you switch traffic over. Once the old store is deleted, you cannot go back. This step is what separates a successful move from a move that looks successful until customers and search engines find the broken pieces.
And then there is the part that actually loses businesses
If you do need a new store, the payments problem turns out to be the easy half. This is what is sitting in your current store right now, and what happens to each piece when someone tries to move it by hand:
Why this category in particular
A firearms store's data is dangerous to move by hand because shipping and compliance metadata lives in metafields and custom product fields. Your FFL-gating rules, state-level restrictions, age-verification flags, and any caliber-to-state mapping are all either in metafields or in non-standard product fields that a CSV export cannot carry. If those are lost or silently point to the old store's system, you will ship products to blocked states or to underage customers, and the acquirer will terminate you immediately. The migration must preserve every compliance-linked metafield and every custom shipping rule.
| What you own | How much of it | What breaks doing it by hand | What we do instead |
|---|---|---|---|
| Product images | 6,400images≈ 27 hrsbulk re-upload, ~15 sec each | By handthe CSV carries image URLs and alt text, but they point at your OLD store's CDN — so the moment the old store goes, every image 404s. Re-upload and Shopify appends a dedupe suffix to the filename, which breaks every theme section and product description that referenced the original URL | Automatedevery file re-uploaded through the API with its alt text and variant attachment intact, its content type preserved so image-restricted fields still accept it, and every reference to the old URL rewritten |
| Product descriptions | 800descriptions≈ 2 hrsone pass to repair inline image links — the CSV carries the text | By handdescriptions are full of inline images and links pointing at the old store's CDN. Paste them into the new store and the text survives perfectly while every embedded image quietly dies — which you usually discover from a customer, not from a report | Automatedbodies copied verbatim, then a second pass rewrites every source-CDN URL inside them to the re-uploaded file on the new store |
| Product attributes & variants | 2,400variants≈ 45 minthe CSV carries these; the time is verifying option order | By handoption ORDER is part of the product's identity. Rebuild "Size, Colour" as "Colour, Size" and every theme swatch, saved customer URL and app that keys on variant position breaks — silently, because the product page still renders | Automatedvariants upserted by SKU with option names and order preserved, so swatches, deep links and app data keep working |
| Metafields & metaobjects | 4,800metafields≈ 32 hrsonly the reference, JSON and metaobject fields, ~1 min each | By handthe product CSV carries simple text and number metafields — but not metaobjects, and not reference or JSON types, which is exactly where app data and theme content live. Reference fields are the real trap: copy the value and it still points at objects in the OLD store, so the page renders and the custom block is silently empty | Automatedwritten in dependency order after their targets exist, with embedded references re-pointed at the new store's objects — and any value whose reference cannot be resolved is dropped rather than written broken |
| SEO data & redirects | 932records≈ 3 hrsredirects one at a time, plus a handle audit | By handany handle that changes becomes a dead URL with no redirect, and existing 301s are not in the product CSV at all. Years of accumulated ranking and backlinks end up pointing at pages that no longer resolve — the most expensive thing on this page to get wrong, and the slowest to notice | AutomatedSEO titles, meta descriptions and handles carried across, and every existing 301 recreated, so nothing that used to rank starts 404ing |
| Your custom theme | 1theme≈ 6 hrs2–10 hrs depending on how customised it is | By handa theme is not just its files. The settings, section content and block ordering are stored against the store, so a file copy gives you the layout and none of the content. Hardcoded asset URLs and tracking snippets also still point at the old store | Automatedyour live theme pulled and pushed as-is, then scanned for tracking snippets and hardcoded URLs that need re-pointing |
| Customers | 2,500customers≈ 2 hrsCSV import, then cleaning up the rows that fail | By handthe importer works, but marketing consent is the exposure: the CSV carries the current opt-in state and NOT the timestamp or source behind it. Re-opting someone in is a compliance breach, dropping them burns list revenue you paid for, and you cannot prove which happened afterwards. Default-address designation is also lost | Automatedcustomers upserted by email with every address, the default-address designation, and email and SMS consent states and timestamps preserved exactly as they were |
| Order history | 4,200orders≈ 8 hrsa paid third-party importer, plus a day of mapping and reconciliation | By handShopify's own CSV importer cannot create orders at all, so the hours here assume you buy a third-party importer — key them in by hand instead and 9,400 orders is closer to 390 hours, which is why nobody does that and why order history is simply abandoned in most DIY moves. Then support cannot answer a warranty claim, repeat-purchase segments are empty, and every returning-customer flow starts from zero. Getting the mapping wrong duplicates orders or re-dates them to today, and both are worse than not importing at all | Automatedfull order history recreated through the API with line items, properties, customers re-associated, original dates and tracking numbers intact |
| Navigation menus | 3menus≈ 1 hrsabout an hour to rebuild and relink them all by hand | By handmenu items store resource IDs, not paths, so nothing about them is portable — every link has to be re-pointed at the equivalent collection, page or product on the new store | Automatedmenus rebuilt with their nesting, and every item re-pointed at the equivalent object on the new store |
| Discount codes | 15discounts≈ 1 hrsabout 1 hr via the discount CSV, or ~3 hrs rebuilt by hand | By handthe discount CSV covers basic codes, but automatic discounts, quantity breaks and combination rules are not in it and have to be reconstructed by hand. A subtly wrong rule is worse than a missing one, because nobody notices until it has been over-discounting for a fortnight | Automateddiscounts recreated through the API with their rules, usage limits and dates intact, including automatic and free-shipping types |
| Blogs & pages | 12articles & pages≈ 48 minrecreated one at a time, ~4 min each | By handno CSV route for either. Articles also have no SEO fields of their own — their title and description tags live in metafields — so a hand-rebuilt blog loses its SEO even when every word of the text is right | Automatedarticles and pages recreated with authors, tags and publish dates, their SEO written to the metafields Shopify actually stores it in, and inline image URLs rewritten |
| Apps & app data | 8apps≈ 8 hrsabout 1 hr per app to reinstall, reconfigure and re-test | By handmost app data lives in metafields on your products and customers, so reinstalling the app gets you an empty app: reviews gone, subscription plans gone, loyalty balances gone, bundles gone. Flows and automations have to be rebuilt by hand and re-tested, and anything with its own billing has to be re-subscribed | Automatedthe metafield data your apps rely on migrates with the products and customers it hangs off, so a reinstalled app finds its data waiting instead of an empty store |
See these numbers for YOUR store, free
The figures above are a typical store in your category. The demo scan connects read-only to yours and counts the real thing — every product, variant, image, customer, order and metafield — then tells you exactly what a migration would carry across. No card, and it never writes to your store.
▶ Run the free demo scanDoes this need a new company?
A firearms merchant does not need a new legal entity to process through a specialist acquirer. If you have been declined by Shopify Payments or Stripe, opening a new company will not reset that decision—both MATCH and the specialist's own underwriting follow the person, not just the business name. Your FFL is tied to your personal SSN or your business entity; a new shell company will not change that. Apply with your current structure and be transparent about your history.
Frequently asked
Why was I declined by Shopify Payments if I have a valid FFL?
Shopify Payments is underwritten by Stripe, and Stripe's policy treats firearms as restricted—not prohibited, but restricted with limited availability. That means Stripe does not board firearms merchants by default through Shopify. An FFL license proves you are legal to sell; it does not change Stripe's risk decision. Specialist acquirers do board FFL dealers, but they require proof of your license, your shipping workflow, and your compliance controls. Stripe's blanket restriction is structural, not a licensing gap.
Which payment gateway will actually work for my gun store?
Several high-risk acquirers publicly advertise firearms underwriting and will connect you to gateways Shopify supports natively—Authorize.net on a high-risk MID, or gateways from specialists like PaymentCloud and Easy Pay Direct. Which one approves you, at what rate and with what reserve, depends entirely on your FFL status, your processing history, and whether your shipping workflow enforces FFL-to-FFL transfers. Rather than cold-email each one, use the quote form on this page to describe your operation and get matched to active underwriters.
What happens to my product data if I move to a new payment processor?
Your product catalog, images and descriptions move cleanly. Your compliance metadata does not. Your FFL-gating rules, state-level geo-blocks, age-verification flags and any custom shipping logic are all stored in metafields or outside Shopify's standard product schema. A CSV export will not carry them, so they must be migrated by hand or through a custom script. If they are lost, your new store will ship to blocked states or to customers below the federal age limit, and your acquirer will terminate you. This is why a hand migration of a firearms store is almost always incomplete.
Will my reserve be huge?
Yes, typically. Firearms merchants commonly report rolling reserves of 10–20% held for 90–180 days. That is because chargebacks and disputes are common in this category (high AOV, high-value items, sometimes buyer's remorse or shipping disputes). Budget for that reserve from day one, because it will be in your contract and it will affect your cash flow. Some acquirers will lower the reserve if your processing history is clean and your volume is high; most will not negotiate until you have proven yourself.
Can I just export and import the CSV and call it done?
Not unless your store contains only text fields and product SKUs. Shopify's CSV export leaves behind metafields, metaobjects, orders, gift card codes, videos, themes, menus, discounts and redirects. The things most stores rely on. You can move the CSV, but then you have half a store. You need a plan for each missing category before you go live.
What happens to my customer data and order history?
Orders do not export through CSV. You must download them separately from your reports or ask Shopify support for an export. Customer email addresses and account records do not appear in CSV either — those must be exported separately as well. Customer data is critical, especially if you have consent timestamps for email marketing. Treat orders and customers as a separate export, verify the counts match the old store, and keep that list safe before you delete the old store.
Will my gift card codes transfer?
No. Gift card codes cannot be read through any Shopify API — no one can extract them, not even Shopify. That means they cannot be automatically moved. You must issue new gift cards in the new store. If you have outstanding balance on old codes that you want to honor, you will need to track and re-issue manually, or accept the loss. Check what gift cards you have issued before the move so you know what you are dealing with.
What about my theme and navigation menus?
Themes and menus do not export through CSV. You must select a theme in the new store and configure it from scratch, or pay a developer to replicate your current theme's customizations. Navigation menus must be rebuilt manually. If you used a third-party app to manage menus, check whether that app can export and re-import. The theme and navigation are visible to every customer, so do not skip them.
How do I know nothing was left behind?
Count everything. Before you go live, export the old store's data one more time. Import it into the new store again. Then compare: product count, order count, customer count, discount count, redirect count. If counts match, you have moved what can be moved. If a count is off, investigate why before you switch traffic. Do not assume the migration is complete until you have verified it. Once the old store is deleted, verification becomes impossible.
Move everything, verified twice, from $247
Pick a package and the migration order form unlocks immediately. Your existing store is only ever read from — we never write to it, so nothing you still have can be made worse. How the migration runs, step by step →