Horizon Theme upgrade with Metaobject-Driven Content

Arbor Scientific

Theme Migration Horizon Implementation Content Architecture App Consolidation Performance Optimization Custom Feature Development

Most ecommerce sites sell products. Arbor Scientific sells understanding. For decades, the company has supplied physics, chemistry, and STEM lab equipment to educators across the country—but their real value is in how they connect products to curriculum. A teacher doesn’t just need a prism; they need the prism, the lab guide, the conceptual video, and the equipment list for the full optics unit. That’s the experience Arbor Scientific set out to build.

But the platform wasn’t keeping up with that vision. Their Shopify store had accumulated years of custom theme modifications, relied on Shogun for page management, and leaned on a growing stack of third-party apps for functionality that should have been native. The internal team couldn’t update content without developer involvement. The site was slow, expensive to maintain, and difficult to evolve.

For a company trying to become the go-to education platform for science teachers, it wasn’t sustainable.

MTN Haus proposed a single move that would address all of it: migrate to Shopify’s Horizon theme. Horizon’s native flexibility meant the site could be rebuilt with minimal custom code—but the migration wasn’t just about a design refresh. It was the vehicle to eliminate Shogun, reduce app dependencies, fix the performance issues, and give the Arbor Scientific team full control over both product and education content.

A faster site, a leaner tech stack, and a team that can finally build the platform they envisioned. Here’s how MTN Haus got them there.

The Challenge

Arbor Scientific had been on Shopify for years, and the store had served them well—up to a point. Like a lot of growing businesses, they’d solved problems one at a time: a page builder here, a third-party app there, a custom code patch to get a specific layout working. Over time, those individual fixes compounded into a system that only a few people fully understood.

Shogun managed most of the page content. The theme itself was heavily modified. Every new app added another layer of scripts and complexity. The cumulative effect showed up in page speed and in the team’s ability to move quickly—both were suffering.

The bigger issue was strategic. Arbor Scientific didn’t just want a faster store—they wanted to become an education platform. That meant hosting curriculum-aligned content, lab planning tools, and conceptual resources alongside the product catalog. But the existing setup made that nearly impossible without developer involvement at every step. The content team had ideas; the infrastructure was the bottleneck.

The Solution

When MTN Haus evaluated the situation, the recommendation wasn’t to patch what existed. It was to start from a better foundation. Shopify’s Horizon theme had just launched, and its native section and block architecture could handle the vast majority of what Arbor Scientific needed—without the custom code that had made their previous theme so fragile. Layouts that previously required Shogun or bespoke development were achievable through Horizon’s editor alone.

That was the practical unlock. But the real value was in what it freed up. With Horizon handling the standard layout work, MTN Haus could focus engineering time on the things that actually differentiate Arbor Scientific: the custom quote system integrated across both the storefront and customer accounts, the Lab Builder that lets teachers assemble curated equipment lists, and the customer account workflows that support institutional purchasing.

For the education content layer, MTN Haus built a metaobject-driven architecture that lets the Arbor Scientific team create and manage structured content—lab guides, curriculum resources, topic-based navigation—directly from Shopify Admin. No Shogun. No developer tickets. The same team that manages products now manages educational content, from the same interface.

The app consolidation followed naturally. Features that had required separate subscriptions—page building, dynamic content rendering, certain layout behaviors—were now native to the theme. Fewer apps meant fewer scripts, fewer compatibility risks, and lower monthly costs.

The Results

The site launched in January 2026. Comparing the first two months post-launch against the same window a year earlier, the numbers tell a clear story:

12.2% increase in total sales
7.2% higher average order value
10.7% more sessions reaching checkout
7% increase in completed checkouts
5.7% more orders on just 4.3% more traffic

The traffic increase was modest. The conversion lift was not. More of the same visitors are moving through the funnel—browsing longer, adding to cart, and completing purchases. Removing Shogun and consolidating the app stack also improved page load times across the site, which matters for an audience that often browses on school and university networks.

And for the Arbor Scientific team, the day-to-day has fundamentally changed. The people closest to the content—curriculum specialists, marketers, product managers—now control the site. Engineering focuses on the custom tools that differentiate the business. The platform finally matches the ambition: not just a store, but a resource that teachers come back to.