Migrating to a new Shopify store, and you sell weight-loss products. 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 weight-loss products
Shopify Payments is underwritten by Stripe, and Stripe lists weight loss supplements and diet products as restricted. The primary trigger is chargeback history: weight loss subscriptions are the single most chargeback-prone category in nutritional products, especially where negative-option billing or free trials are involved. The secondary trigger is outcome claims—before-and-after imagery or statements that a product causes weight loss read as medical claims to a reviewer, which escalates the category from restricted to prohibited without changing your product at all.
Rule out the easy fix first — then deal with the real one
There is no documented Shopify platform route for weight loss products. What most merchants try first is applying to Shopify Payments directly and hoping their claims are mild enough to pass—this fails because the chargeback data comes before the claims review. The honest path is that you must move to a high-risk acquirer that prices weight loss subscriptions as their own risk class and has already decided to underwrite them. That means applying to a processor, not a platform, and that underwriting is genuinely separate from any Shopify decision.
It only helps if all of these are true:
- No free-trial or negative-option billing; subscription charges must be transparent at signup.
- All before-and-after imagery must be removed or captioned as 'results not typical'.
- Outcome claims stripped: no language stating the product causes weight loss.
- Your processing history shows no more than 2% disputed transactions in the past 12 months.
- The acquirer you approach must explicitly advertise weight loss or supplements on their website.
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
💊 Sold to be swallowed, inhaled or applied — health claims and product-liability risk
Your product pages carry compliance weight they don't carry for other merchants. A claim on the old store—'supports', 'promotes', 'helps'—gets copied to the new one as written, and if it crosses into drug claim territory, it travels with you. Before migration, have the claims language reviewed by someone who reads them the way a regulator does. Also audit your certificates of analysis, test reports, and allergen disclosures: they need to be linked where a customer can find them in ten seconds, not buried in a PDF folder. A new store is the moment to get this clean, because your dispute rate—the 'it didn't work' chargebacks that plague consumables—will reflect whatever pages you land with. Take the time to separate marketing from claims before you move.
🔁 Recurring billing is a large share of revenue
A subscription business cannot afford downtime on stored payment methods. Your subscriber base and their billing schedules live in Shopify, and they will move with the store, but their payment method tokens are held by your processor, not by Shopify, and cannot be exported or imported at all. This means every subscriber's next billing date arrives at the exact moment you are most likely to have connectivity problems or incomplete migration. If you use Shopify Payments, tokens stay with Shopify—your new store can access them immediately. If you use a third-party processor, confirm in writing that they will release or continue to serve payment methods without interruption during the cutover window. Plan the migration for a day after your heaviest billing cycle, and notify subscribers 48 hours in advance that billing may be delayed. A lost billing cycle is revenue you will never recover.
💎 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.
What you actually have to fix
Underwriters do not change their minds because you asked. They change them because the facts changed. For weight-loss products, these are the facts that move the decision:
Remove all outcome claims and before-and-after imagery from every page
This is the single highest-yield fix. Outcome claims—'lose 5 kg in 30 days', 'clinically proven to suppress appetite', 'transforms body shape'—read to an underwriter as medical claims, which moves you from restricted to prohibited. Before-and-after photos are the same: they imply causation and face specific FTC enforcement. Audit product descriptions, email campaigns, blog posts, customer testimonials, advertising pixels and social feeds. The claims are what drive sales, so merchants resist this; underwriters will decline you if you do not.
Obtain detailed chargeback analytics for the past 24 months and show a mitigation plan
Acquirers in this category ask for chargeback and dispute data first. They need to see your reason codes, your monthly dispute rate, and why subscriptions are being reversed—is it billing confusion, product dissatisfaction, or refund-request friction? Then show how you will reduce them: clearer billing disclosures, faster refund processing, better product descriptions, or customer support improvements. A credible mitigation plan is often what tips an underwriter from decline to yes.
Rewrite subscription terms to be crystal clear at the moment of purchase
Negative-option and free-trial billing is where the disputes come from. At checkout, the customer must see exactly what they are being charged, when the first charge occurs, how to cancel, and what the refund window is. Screenshot your current checkout flow and compare it to your terms. If there is any daylight between what the customer sees and what your billing agreement says, fix it. Acquirers will ask for proof of this consent.
Gather 24 months of complete processing and bank statements from your current or previous processor
Acquirers need to see your historical chargeback rate, dispute timeline and processing volumes. If you have been declined before, they need to know it. Obtain statements from your current processor and any previous one; if you are starting from scratch with no history, say so. Honesty on this point is non-negotiable, because acquirers pull MATCH and will see declines anyway.
What underwriting will ask you for
- Detailed chargeback and dispute history for the past 24 months, broken down by reason code.
- Copies of all product pages, email flows and advertising creative that mention weight loss or slimming outcomes.
- Subscription billing terms: the exact wording shown at checkout, proof of consent, and refund policy.
- Bank statements and processing history from your current or previous processor, if any.
- Personal and business tax returns (typically 2 years) and UBO verification documents.
- Proof of supplier relationships and product sourcing for any white-label or private-label items.
- A detailed chargeback mitigation plan explaining how you will reduce disputes going forward.
Getting underwritten for weight-loss products
High-risk acquiring is an entire industry that exists for businesses Stripe declines, and several of them publicly underwrite weight-loss products. 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 weight-loss products
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
Weight loss stores are dangerous to migrate by hand for a specific reason: subscription and billing metafields are almost never moved correctly. Billing frequency, renewal dates, cancellation windows and customer portal links live in metafields that a CSV export cannot read at all—and if they are reconstructed from memory instead, the subscription dates silently shift, renewal logic breaks, and customers discover the error when they are charged unexpectedly. On a subscription business, a billing error is not a cosmetic bug; it is the primary source of chargebacks.
| What you own | How much of it | What breaks doing it by hand | What we do instead |
|---|---|---|---|
| Product images | 1,080images≈ 5 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 | 180descriptions≈ 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 | 540variants≈ 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 | 1,440metafields≈ 10 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 | 563records≈ 6 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 |
| Product videos | 12videos≈ 48 minre-upload and re-attach, ~4 min each | By handthe product CSV does not carry video or 3D media, so every one is a manual re-upload. They also cannot be pulled straight from a remote URL — the bytes have to be downloaded and staged first, and a wrong content type lands the file as a generic attachment that media-restricted fields then reject | Automatedvideo bytes downloaded, staged through a proper upload target, re-attached to the right product, and verified as processed rather than silently failed |
| Customers | 8,500customers≈ 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 | 34,000orders≈ 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 | 85discounts≈ 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 | 63articles & pages≈ 4 hrsrecreated 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 | 12apps≈ 12 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?
You do not need a new legal entity to apply to a high-risk acquirer. Many merchants believe that a fresh company resets their history; it does not. MATCH tracks the individual behind the entity for five years, so a new company name will not help if you are personally listed on a previous decline. The honest approach is to apply as yourself with full disclosure of your history, or genuinely fix the issues that caused the decline and reapply under the same entity.
Frequently asked
Will Shopify Payments take my weight loss store?
No. Shopify Payments is underwritten by Stripe, which lists weight loss supplements as restricted, and the chargeback history of the category makes approval rare even in the restricted lane. You will need to move to a high-risk acquirer that specializes in supplements and subscriptions. The good news is that several do, openly, but you must be honest about your history and remove outcome claims first.
Which gateway will work for me, and what should I expect the reserve to be?
The gateway depends on which acquirer takes you, and acquirers in this space advertise publicly through high-risk brokers. You will typically see 10–20% of your monthly turnover held in rolling reserve for 90–180 days—that is the standard for weight loss subscriptions because chargebacks are predictable and high. Smaller acquirers may hold more; larger ones may hold less. Get a quote from at least three before you commit.
If I migrate to a new store, will my subscription data survive the move?
Not reliably if you move by hand. Shopify's own CSV export cannot carry subscription metafields, renewal dates, or billing logic at all—they stay behind in the old store. A proper migration tool reads the metafields and rewrites them into the new store so subscriptions keep their cadence. If you move manually, your subscription dates will shift and customers will dispute unexpected charges. That is the most common migration failure in this category.
What if I've been declined before by another acquirer? Can I still apply?
Yes, but you must disclose it. Acquirers pull MATCH, so they will see a previous decline anyway. The path forward is honesty plus fixing the issues that caused it: removing outcome claims, lowering your chargeback rate, improving your billing transparency, or genuinely sourcing better products. A new company name does not reset your history, because MATCH tracks the person for five years. Reapply when the substance has changed, not the name.
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 →