What changed
Founder says sales fell about 30% after an Adobe Commerce relaunch
When
Migration announced September 29, 2021; 7NEWS report November 8, 2026
Who it affects
Adorn Cosmetics, Melbourne; founder Briony Kennedy; Adobe
What to do
Audit redirects, ad URLs and tracking before any replatform

Key takeaways

  • Adorn Cosmetics' founder says sales fell about 30% when its Adobe Commerce site launched; Adobe declined to comment.
  • The store still trades on Shopify with a rescue appeal, so the reported closure is not confirmed.
  • Replatform risk sits in redirects, ad URLs and tracking: test all three before and after launch.

Adorn Cosmetics, from upgrade to rescue appeal

  1. Adorn launches on open-source Magento, per B&T

  2. Move to Adobe Commerce announced

  3. New site goes live; founder says sales fall about 30%

  4. Store moves to Shopify

  5. 7NEWS reports the brand faces closure

  6. Store still trading with a rescue banner

What happened, and what is confirmed

On September 29, 2021, B&T reported that Adorn was moving its entire store to Adobe Commerce. The brand had run an open-source version of Magento since its launch in 2009. The upgrade promised better product search, personalised recommendations, a bigger loyalty program and inventory syncing. Kennedy said then that it would free the team to focus on products and the brand.

Five years later, Kennedy told 7NEWS the opposite happened. PPC Land, which summarised the November 8 report on November 9, says she reported that sales fell about 30% instantly at launch, that Facebook and Instagram ads costing about $1 million a year stopped linking back to the store, and that she could not get out of the contract. 7NEWS named local agency Convert Digital as the implementation partner and reported that mediation between the parties failed. Kennedy says she laid off staff and sold her family home.

  • Peak turnover: about $6 million a year, per 7NEWS (currency and year not stated)
  • Sales drop: about 30%, the founder's own estimate, with no baseline period given
  • Ad spend affected: about $1 million a year on Facebook and Instagram, per the 7NEWS account
  • Adobe: declined to comment for legal reasons
  • Today: the store runs on Shopify and was still trading on November 10

The detail most coverage misses: the store is still open

7NEWS said the company would close the next day, barring a miracle. When we checked the Adorn homepage on November 10, it was still selling, now on Shopify, with a Help Save our Aussie Business banner, a line saying it was as seen on Channel 7, a clearance section and a free gift on larger orders. That suggests the TV report is being used to drive a rescue push. It also means the closure is not confirmed, and no formal insolvency filing has been reported.

These are one side's claims. No dates were given for the Adobe go-live or the later move to Shopify, and the 30% figure is Kennedy's estimate. Some commentators on X argued the platform alone does not explain the decline. Treat this as a cautionary story about migration risk, not proof that one vendor caused a collapse.

So what: why a 30% drop can sink a profitable brand

A replatform failure rarely shows up as a crash. It shows up as a slow leak: old URLs that 404, ads that land on dead pages, tracking that stops reporting sales, so ad platforms optimise on bad data. Each one alone is fixable. Together they cut revenue while fixed costs stay put.

Example with illustrative numbers: a brand sells $400,000 a month online at a 55% gross margin. A 30% drop removes $120,000 of sales and $66,000 of gross profit a month, or $792,000 a year. If it keeps spending about $83,000 a month on social ads, about $1 million a year, and some of those clicks land on broken pages, the loss compounds. Most brands of that size run on net margins far thinner than that gap.

What brands should do before they replatform

Whether you move to Shopify, Adobe Commerce or anything else, the risk sits in the cutover, not the software. Our ecommerce web development team runs these checks on every launch, and our ecommerce SEO services cover the redirect map.

  • SEO lead: crawl every live URL before launch and map each one to a 301 redirect. Metric: zero new 404s in Google Search Console and organic sessions within 10% of baseline after four weeks.
  • Paid media lead: export every final URL from Meta, Google and email flows and click-test each one on launch day. Metric: every ad landing page returns 200, and paid conversion rate holds.
  • Analytics owner: test purchase events and pixels on a staging checkout. Metric: tracked purchases within 5% of actual orders in week one.
  • Ecommerce manager: launch outside your peak season, keep the old site ready to switch back, and compare conversion daily for 30 days. Metric: conversion rate against a four-week baseline.
  • Founder: tie agency and vendor payments to acceptance tests and write an exit clause into the contract before signing. Metric: signed criteria for traffic, speed and conversion.
  • Channel lead: do not rely on one storefront. A marketplace channel can carry sales while the site recovers. Metric: share of revenue from your largest channel.

Replatform launch checklist

  • Crawl every live URL
  • 301 map for every old page
  • Click-test all ad and email links
  • Verify purchase tracking on staging
  • Launch outside peak season
  • Keep a rollback ready
  • Watch conversion daily for 30 days

When this advice does not apply

A small store with a few dozen products and little search traffic carries less migration risk, and a theme change on the same platform is not a replatform. If your sales fall after a launch, check seasonality and ad changes before blaming the site. If you are weighing where to sell, our Shopify vs Amazon FBA guide compares the trade-offs.

Where PPC Spider fits

We build and run stores and marketplace channels for brands, and we treat a site move as a revenue event with a rollback plan. If you are planning one, our Shopify team can review the plan, and a free Amazon audit shows how much a marketplace channel could carry while you switch. More stories like this are on our Shopify and ecommerce news channel.

Sources

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