Migrating New Leaf Publishing From OSCommerce to Adobe Commerce

New Leaf Publishing Group is a 40-year-old, family-owned publisher that has evolved into a growing eCommerce business focused on educational and faith-based content. 121eCommerce helped them transition to Adobe Commerce, delivering a more stable, scalable platform and expert support, faster development, and reduced technical complexity for sustained growth.

The challenge

The Problem Faced

New Leaf Publishing Group has been a family-owned publishing business for over 40 years, later expanding into eCommerce to grow its reach. While their online store enabled digital sales, it was originally built on a basic OSCommerce setup with heavy custom PHP coding that lacked long-term scalability.

As the business grew, the limitations of their platform became more apparent. When Chris Hallski joined the team, he encountered a system with minimal backup, no vendor support, and direct codebase customizations without version control. Although the move to Magento 1 helped drive significant revenue growth, ongoing maintenance, increasing complexity, and performance issues, especially on mobile, continued to create challenges.

It became clear that a more robust and scalable solution was needed to support continued growth, reduce technical debt, and improve overall performance.

Key Challenges:

Minimal Backup Infrastructure and Lack of Vendor Support

Heavy Reliance on Custom Code

High Maintainence Overhead From Third Party Extensions

Poor Mobile Performance and Scalability Limitations

The Client Journey

“They recommended you as someone fit for our scale at that time, you had the skill set necessary, and were willing to work with us. Especially because I’m still (even today) highly involved in the day-to-day operations and upkeep of the site and you are willing to work with us as a partner with some in-house expertise and fill the gaps. This is versus going, “no, we need to own this entire project and we’re going to run it the way we want to and this is everything you’re doing wrong without looking at the business cases behind where we were. That was actually extremely important, because we were in a transition period.”

“I cover our in-house IT and the website,” Chris mentioned, “If something goes wrong, especially if multiple things go wrong simultaneously, I may be able to tackle one or two of the problems. The rest I have to triage and I need extra hands. That’s where 121 helps me out.”

“Hey, we’re not able to figure this out. Let’s ask one of the Senior Devs for a little bit and see what they have extra input. You have a brilliant person in each spot. It makes a huge difference and that’s been invaluable.”

“OK. We’re going to bring this up or hey, we can’t make that change, but we’re gonna incorporate this into our next Sprint planning.”

“(We’ll be using) Dynamic blocks for customer segments, and doing targeted emails based on their interest. We’re not hounding customers around the web with retargeting advertising, but if they’ve expressed interest in or purchased particular products we want to make sure that we let them know proactively about other products that are in the lineup next time they visit us. Let’s say you bought a third grade math curriculum last year. We want to let you know that we hope we liked this curriculum, and if so, we have a fourth grade curriculum in that same product series. We don’t want to follow you around the web for three months after you purchase something with advertisements for the same exact thing that they just purchased.”

“I think the fact that we are still working with you (since 2017) should answer that question. This (experience) is atypical. Sure, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence: every company is willing to look at your website, and give you an audit and say “hey, we’ll fix this for X amount of dollars.” Where the difference comes out is in executing that offering in a timely fashion and on budget. Most vendors over promise and under deliver. That has not been my experience working with you. Your estimates are fairly accurate. If there is a cost / time overrun, it’s usually because we didn’t specify clearly enough, or it’s (because of) Adobe Commerce and conflicting extensions. You get into the weeds and you find out that something else doesn’t play nicely that was not really anticipatable. For straightforward development and new functionality, your time estimates are bang on, or even slightly pessimistic. Frequently we’re able to get stuff sorted out even quicker than you quoted.”

our approach

The Solution

New Leaf Publishing Group partnered with 121eCommerce to transition from a heavily customized and outdated setup to a more scalable and stable solution using Adobe Commerce. Rather than a complete handoff, the collaboration was designed to complement their in-house expertise, allowing Chris and his team to stay actively involved while leveraging external specialists when needed.

The move to Adobe Commerce enabled New Leaf to consolidate functionality within the core platform, reducing reliance on multiple third-party extensions and simplifying long-term maintenance. With improved architecture and stronger native capabilities, the business gained a more reliable foundation to support growth, performance, and future innovation.

Additionally, 121eCommerce provided flexible development support, allowing New Leaf to scale resources based on demand. Whether it was backend development, frontend improvements, or managing complex upgrades, the team ensured that critical tasks were executed efficiently and with minimal disruption.

FLEXIBLE DEVELOPMENT SUPPORT ON DEMAND

121eCommerce provided scalable support tailored to New Leaf’s needs, giving them access to specialized developers for backend, frontend, and upgrade tasks without requiring a fully in-house team.

CENTRALIZED FUNCTIONALITY & REDUCED EXTENSION DEPENDENCY

Transitioning to Adobe Commerce allowed New Leaf to bring key business functionality into the core platform, minimizing reliance on multiple third-party extensions and lowering ongoing maintenance complexity.

EXPERT-LED UPGRADES & LONG-TERM STABILITY

With deep platform expertise, 121eCommerce ensured smooth upgrades, avoided common pitfalls, and helped New Leaf maintain a stable, high-performing eCommerce environment while reducing technical debt over time.

the results

Stronger, Faster, Better

Overall, the business impact from switching from Open Source to Commerce has been felt by Chris. On the platform itself and development side, Chris mentioned that, “we’re happy with a stable platform. We aren’t having any issues.” In terms of what is next with the new platform, New Leaf is looking into the new functionalities and marketing tools that come with it.

Chris is also looking into reducing their “technical debt” as they can more effectively find what extensions are being actively used, and cutting back on legacy code/customizations. He said, “I would say the ongoing cost is a little higher than we might like. But we also have a lot of technical debt that we’ve been aggressively working on trimming down.”

No More Troubleshooting and Fixes

A reliable and scalable eCommerce environment that runs smoothly without recurring issues, allowing the team to focus on growth instead of constant troubleshooting and fixes.

Reduced Technical Debt

Reduced reliance on heavy development and a more efficient system means less friction, fewer bottlenecks, and smoother internal workflows.

Enhanced Marketing Capabilities

With a reliable platform and a responsive partner behind them, First Gear can grow their store, expand offerings, and adapt quickly as the business evolves.

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