According to data from a survey of 480 Shopify store owners and 150 development projects completed through South’s platform, 71% of in-house Shopify builds miss their target launch date, 58% require significant rework after launch, and 64% of store owners regret not hiring an experienced developer at the beginning. What surprised us was how many store owners tried to build alone or hire the cheapest developer available, then ended up spending three times more on fixes than they would have on hiring someone good from the start,” said Marcus Chen, VP of Operations at South. The Reality Behind Shopify Store DevelopmentMany entrepreneurs begin with a straightforward plan: select a Shopify theme, customize it, add products, and launch. However, projects can become significantly more complicated when businesses require custom functionality, inventory integrations, specialized checkout experiences, performance improvements, or connections with third-party systems. What begins as a short project can become a lengthy development cycle involving repeated fixes, technical debt, and unexpected costs.