Storefront and catalogue
Product pages, search and filtering, and variants modelled as their own stock items so a medium in black sells out independently of a large in black.
← Services
Custom e-commerce, without the revenue share
Hosted platforms take a cut of every order and a monthly fee on top, and they decide what your checkout is allowed to do. A custom store costs more up front and nothing per sale. We build the storefront, the checkout, and the admin area your staff run day to day, then hand over the code.
When you should not hire us for this
If you are selling a straightforward catalogue, you have no unusual checkout requirements, and you are not yet doing meaningful volume, use Shopify. It will be live sooner and cost less than we will, and paying a percentage on a small number of orders is cheaper than paying us to build something. Custom starts making sense when the platform fee outgrows a build, when your fulfilment or pricing rules do not fit the template, or when you need the storefront to talk to systems the platform will not let you reach. If you tell us what you are selling and we think you should use Shopify, we will say so on the call rather than quote you.
What a build includes
Checkout and payments
Stripe by default, since it is the least painful to reconcile and the easiest to hand over. Guest checkout, saved carts, and a checkout you control rather than one a platform themes for you.
Multi-currency pricing
Shoppers see and pay in their own currency, and the order record keeps the currency the sale actually happened in, so refunds months later still reconcile correctly.
The admin your staff run
Order management from placed through fulfilled, inventory tied to variants, and product editing that does not require a developer or a deployment.
Yours on handover
Code, database, and infrastructure accounts are in your name from the first commit. There is no hosting you are locked into and no per-order fee to us, ever.
A clothing retailer needed to sell online without handing a permanent cut of every order to a hosted platform, and needed to price for shoppers paying in more than one currency.
- Storefront catalogue with size and colour variants, each tracked as its own stock item
- Cart and Stripe checkout
- Multi-currency pricing, so a shopper sees and pays in their own currency
- Admin area for order management, covering the lifecycle from placed through fulfilled
- Inventory tracking tied to variants rather than to the parent product
What we have learned building these
Currency is a data problem before it is a display problem
Showing a converted price is the easy half. The hard half is that the charge, the refund, and the order record all have to agree on which currency the sale happened in, long after the rate has moved. Stores that keep one price and format it per visitor reconcile incorrectly the first time someone returns an item from another country.
Stock belongs to the variant, not the product
Sizes and colours sell out independently and are picked and shipped independently. Counting stock against the parent product is the mistake that oversells orders, and it is painful to unpick once there is order history sitting on top of it.
The admin decides whether the store survives
A storefront nobody on staff can update becomes a support ticket for every price change. We treat the admin area as the deliverable that determines whether you still want the site in a year, not as an extra bolted on at the end.
Questions we get asked
- Should I just use Shopify instead?
- Often, yes. If your catalogue is standard and your volume is modest, Shopify is live sooner and cheaper than a custom build. Custom wins when platform fees outgrow the build cost, when your pricing or fulfilment rules do not fit the template, or when you need integrations the platform will not permit. We will tell you which case you are in before quoting.
- Can you migrate my existing store?
- Yes, including products, variants, and customer records. Order history is the part that needs a conversation, since how much of it you carry across depends on what your accounting needs and what the old platform will actually export.
- Who owns the code?
- You do, from the first commit. Code, designs, database, and infrastructure accounts are all yours. We keep nothing hostage and there is no ongoing licence.
- Do you take a percentage of sales?
- No. You pay the quoted build price, and after that your only per-order cost is your payment processor's fee, which goes to them and not to us.
- What payment providers do you support?
- Stripe by default. We have shipped it, it reconciles cleanly, and it hands over without drama. Others are possible if you have an existing merchant relationship, and we will quote that honestly rather than pretend it is free.
- How long does a store take?
- A straightforward catalogue store is typically 3 to 6 weeks. Multi-currency, unusual fulfilment rules, or a migration with order history push that out. You get a fixed written quote with a timeline before any work starts.
Tell us what you are selling.
A 30-minute call, then a fixed written quote in CAD within 48 hours. If we think a hosted platform is the better answer for you, that is what the call will tell you.