--- title: "Two Brands, One Platform: How Watts & Co Migrated 373K Records from HubSpot to Front" slug: watts-and-co-hubspot-to-front-case-study date: 2026-06-26 author: Raaj categories: [Case Studies] excerpt: "Watts & Co migrated two brands from HubSpot Service Hub to Front in back-to-back projects with ClonePartner. 68,186 tickets, 151K notes, 52K contacts, and 18K companies transferred across sequential runs, with the first migration completed sample-to-go-live over a single weekend." canonical: https://clonepartner.com/blog/watts-and-co-hubspot-to-front-case-study/ --- # Two Brands, One Platform: How Watts & Co Migrated 373K Records from HubSpot to Front ## TL;DR **Customer:** Watts & Co (Ecclesiastical vestments, textiles, and furnishings since 1874. London, United Kingdom. Royal Warrant holder.) **The Move:** HubSpot Service Hub to Front (two brands: Watts & Co, then J&M Sewing) **The Scope:** 373,871 total records: 68,186 tickets, 151,258 notes, 62,242 messages, 52,018 contacts, 20,928 conversation threads, and 18,444 companies. Spanning ~3 years of support history (2023 to 2025). **The Roadblock:** Multi-thread HubSpot tickets that needed to be flattened into Front conversations. Two separate brands running on the same HubSpot instance, each needing its own Front inbox and migration checklist. **The Outcome:** Both brands fully migrated. First migration completed over a single weekend. Second migration followed a month later. Watts & Co returned for the second project immediately after the first. --- ## By the Numbers - **Total records migrated:** 373,871 - **Notes:** 151,258 - **Tickets:** 68,186 - **Messages:** 62,242 - **Contacts:** 52,018 - **Conversation threads:** 20,928 - **Companies:** 18,444 - **Brands migrated:** 2 (Watts & Co, J&M Sewing) - **First migration (sample to go-live):** 1 weekend --- ## The Challenge: Two Brands, One HubSpot Instance, and a Platform That Stores Data Differently Watts & Co is a London-based heritage brand that has been producing ecclesiastical vestments, textiles, and furnishings since 1874. Under fifth-generation leadership, the company holds a Royal Warrant and has provided garments for royal events, cathedrals, and churches worldwide. In 2024, the group acquired J. Wippell & Co., one of the UK's oldest robe makers (founded 1789), and operates multiple brands including J&M Sewing alongside the core Watts business. The support team was running on HubSpot Service Hub, but the company had chosen Front as its new platform. The challenge was not just migrating one brand but two: Watts & Co first, followed by J&M Sewing a month later, each with its own inbox, contact base, and ticket history within Front. Beyond the multi-brand logistics, HubSpot and Front store support data in fundamentally different ways. HubSpot tickets can contain multiple conversation threads, email messages, and internal notes spread across different parts of the interface. Front organizes everything as conversations. Mapping one structure to the other required more than a data export. It required decisions about what data lives where, what gets merged, and what stays behind. --- ## The ClonePartner Solution: Sequential Migrations with Weekend Execution ClonePartner ran the two migrations as separate, sequential projects. Each followed the same structured process: checklist, sample, review, full run, delta pass. **Migration 1: Watts & Co** - **Custom field setup and sample run.** ClonePartner created custom fields on Front and ran a sample migration of several tickets on a Thursday evening. All migrated tickets were tagged "hubspot migration" with a shared view called "Migrated tickets" for easy review. - **Same-day approval.** Robert Hoare, CEO of Watts & Co, reviewed the sample and approved the full migration within hours. - **Weekend execution.** The full migration ran over the weekend. By Monday morning, nearly all of the initial 20,000+ tickets had been migrated, with a small number of low-information tickets flagged for manual review. - **Review call and delta pass.** A review call identified minor items: a few tickets not appearing under the correct inbox, and tickets from the intake pipeline that needed verification. ClonePartner ran a delta migration the same day to capture any updates from HubSpot since the initial pull, then shared a complete list of migrated tickets with HubSpot IDs, Front ticket IDs, subjects, and creation times. > *"Thank you for your good work."* > > Charlie Graham, Watts & Co **Migration 2: J&M Sewing** The first migration was completed, invoiced, and paid within a single week. The team immediately began planning the second. - **Same process, new brand.** A fresh migration checklist was generated for J&M Sewing. Charlie's team set up the shared inbox and channel in Front, and ClonePartner configured the scripts against the new checklist. - **Companies, contacts, tickets.** The migration followed the same dependency order: companies first, then contacts, then tickets with their messages and notes. Regular updates kept the Watts team informed at each stage. - **Verified and complete.** All accounts, contacts, and tickets were migrated and counts verified against the source. > *"Thank you and Roopi for all your help. Next we will need to do the same for J&M Sewing and I'll be in touch about that soon."* > > Charlie Graham, Watts & Co, immediately after the first migration --- ## The Results: Two Brands, One Front Workspace, Full History Both brands' support histories are now in Front. Tickets from Watts & Co and J&M Sewing sit in separate inboxes with their own views and filters, while sharing a unified contact and company database. Custom fields like "Problem type" carry over from HubSpot, with pre-built views (e.g., "Quality issues") created by ClonePartner so the team could filter and report from day one. The multi-thread HubSpot tickets were restructured into Front conversations. Each HubSpot thread became messages on a single Front conversation, with ticket descriptions and internal notes merged in. Attachments and inline images were downloaded from HubSpot and attached within Front's 25 MB-per-message limit. For Watts & Co, the decision to return for a second migration immediately after the first speaks for itself. Same process, same team, same outcome. > *"Your invoice has been paid. Thank you for your help."* > > Robert Hoare, CEO, Watts & Co --- ## What Made This Migration Different For teams running multiple brands on one helpdesk and planning to migrate them in sequence, three things from this project stand out: - **Sequential is safer than simultaneous.** Migrating Watts first gave the team a chance to validate the process, build confidence, and refine the checklist before running J&M Sewing. The first migration became the proof of concept for the second. - **HubSpot's data model does not map 1:1 to Front.** Notes, messages, and conversation threads live in different places within HubSpot. A naive export misses data. ClonePartner enriched each ticket with its full conversation threads, email messages, and notes before loading into Front. - **Weekend execution minimizes disruption.** Running the bulk migration over a weekend meant the support team could start Monday morning with a full Front workspace. The delta pass caught anything that changed between the initial export and go-live.