Why Your EKM Store Has 3,000 Products (But Your Shopify Store Will Have 100)

When I migrated an industrial supplies business from EKM to Shopify, the export file said 3,000 products. The finished Shopify store has 100.

That’s not a typo. That’s what happens when you understand what you’re actually looking at.

What I Found

EKM treats every variant as a separate product with its own URL. Every thickness, every width, every material combination gets its own listing. So a simple neoprene rubber strip available in ten thicknesses and five widths isn’t one product - it’s fifty.

Multiply that across a catalogue of industrial rubber and sponge materials, and you hit 3,000 very quickly.

The thing is, this business doesn’t sell 3,000 products. They sell rubber strips, sponge strips, and foam sheets in various specifications. That’s maybe 100 actual products. The rest is just combinations.

Why This Matters

If you’re sitting on an EKM store thinking “I’ve got thousands of products, migration will be a nightmare” - take a breath. Your product count is an architectural artefact, not a business reality.

EKM’s structure made sense in 2010. Every product page was a landing page. More URLs meant more chances to rank. But it also meant customers scrolling through endless listings looking for “neoprene strip 3mm thick 50mm wide” instead of just… selecting the options they need.

What Migration Actually Looks Like

This isn’t copy-paste. It’s translation.

I consolidated those 3,000 EKM products into 100 properly structured Shopify product variants. Thickness becomes a dropdown. Width becomes a dropdown. The customer picks what they need, and the system handles the rest.

The result? A store that matches how people actually shop. “I need neoprene strip” → select specs → done. Not “let me search through 3,000 listings hoping I find the right combination.”

The CSV Import Problem

Here’s where it gets technical. When you export from EKM, you get a CSV file with 3,000 rows - one for each “product” (really each variant). Shopify’s CSV import expects a different structure: one row per variant, grouped under parent products.

You can’t just import EKM products into Shopify and expect it to work. The data needs restructuring first - identifying which rows are actually variants of the same product, then reformatting them to match Shopify’s import template.

This is the real work of migration. Not moving files around, but understanding what your product catalogue actually contains and translating it into a structure that makes sense.

The Takeaway

Your EKM product count doesn’t define your migration complexity. Understanding what you actually sell does.

Sometimes migration doesn’t just move your business - it forces you to see it clearly for the first time.

---

Considering an EKM to Shopify migration? Read my complete migration guide or get in touch to discuss your store.