Killed every plugin we could
The previous theme carried eight active plugins doing what twenty lines of custom Liquid does. Plugin-driven stores look templated because they are templated. Ripped them out before laying down a single new section.
← Back to workStudio concept · 2026
Harlow & Finch
A concept brief for an independent menswear label selling small seasonal drops. Built end-to-end to show the work — live client work shown on request.
Year
2026
Role
Concept · Design + Build
- E-commerce
- Shopify
- Brand identity
The brief
Harlow & Finch is a concept brief for an independent British menswear label working out of Stroud. Two collections a year, twelve pieces each, sold direct from the workshop. The brief asked for a storefront that read closer to a tailor's lookbook than a mass-market shop — with Shopify quietly handling inventory and checkout underneath.
Live site
View the full siteOpens in a new tab
Keep the product hero. Lose the noise. Ship before the autumn drop.
Design decisions
The four specific calls that defined this build.
Cart drawer rebuilt for sub-200ms open
The old drawer animated in over three seconds and shipped 90kb of JS. Replaced with a transform-only motion that hits sub-200ms on mid-range Android. Cart conversion is mostly about removing seconds.
Editorial PDP, not a Shopify PDP
Cut the standard thumbnails-left, info-right layout. New layout opens with a full-bleed garment shot, then a sticky size selector that follows the scroll. Reads as a magazine spread, not a template.
Lifestyle hover swap on every card
Each collection card swaps from product shot to lifestyle on hover. Atmosphere without an extra page-load. Shopify can do this — most theme builders just don't bother wiring the second image.
The stack
Every tool chosen on purpose, with a reason that beat the obvious alternative.
- Framework
- Shopify Liquid + Tailwind
Keep Shopify for checkout and inventory, replace everything above the cart with custom Liquid + Tailwind. No theme upgrade lock-in.
- CMS
- Native Shopify + custom Liquid for editorial
No second CMS to maintain. The workshop already has a Shopify login they know.
- Payments
- Shopify Payments + Shop Pay
Shop Pay one-tap checkout lifts conversion ~15% on returning buyers. Free with Shopify.
- Klaviyo for the AW list
Two letters a year — Klaviyo is overkill in capability but its Shopify segmentation is the cleanest in the market.
- Analytics
- Shopify analytics + Plausible
Plausible covers the marketing-page side without cookies. Shopify covers the funnel side. No Google needed.
- Performance
- <145kb on the PDP, <90kb on home
Most boutique stores ship 400kb+ on a PDP. The performance budget was set before the design started.
What success looks like
The numbers a real engagement would be scored on.
+38%
Target · add-to-cart conversion
2.3×
Target · session duration lift
<200ms
Cart drawer open time
Like this for your business?
I'd start with the same brief on yours — built to the same standard, in 2–4 weeks.
Next project
Bramble Coffee Roasters
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