Services
Shopify agency for beauty & skincare brands
We design and build Shopify storefronts for beauty, skincare and cosmetics brands, and almost nothing else. That narrowness is the point: the problems that decide whether a skincare store converts — ingredient depth, routines, shade filtering, evidence handled without overclaiming — are the ones we have already solved.
What we do for beauty brands
Four kinds of engagement, in the order brands usually need them.
A storefront build
The whole thing: information architecture, design, Shopify theme development, the product page depth beauty needs, launch. This is the work when you are rebranding, migrating, or launching a line and the storefront has to carry it.
Theme customisation
You already run a theme and it is close. We extend it — ingredient and routine sections, better filtering, a product page that answers the questions your support inbox keeps getting — without a rebuild you do not need.
Speed and Core Web Vitals
A measured audit and implemented fixes, with before-and-after numbers. Beauty stores are image-heavy and app-heavy, and both are usually where the milliseconds went.
Conversion work on the product page
The page where beauty is won or lost. Shade selection, ingredient legibility, how-to-use, before and after, complete-the-routine merchandising, subscription and refill choice made legible at the point of decision rather than hidden after add-to-cart.
Part of that work is accessibility, and it is a conversion problem before it is a compliance one — an add-to-cart button with no accessible name is an order that cannot be completed, and a variant picker that cannot be reached with a keyboard is the same thing again. We run that as its own engagement too: a WCAG 2.2 AA audit and remediation, on any Shopify theme rather than only the ones we built.
Why beauty commerce is not just ecommerce
A generalist agency will build you a competent store. These are the five things they will not think about unprompted, and each of them costs conversions.
Ingredients are a buying decision, not a detail
Shoppers managing eczema, pregnancy restrictions, fungal acne or a fragrance allergy read the ingredient list before the description. It has to be selectable text on the product page, in the legally required descending order, driven by product data rather than pasted into a description — and it has to stay accurate the first time you reformulate. We wrote the long version of this in the journal.
Claims carry regulatory weight
Before-and-after imagery and efficacy language are governed by advertising standards, and they vary by market. A slider component is easy; knowing that it needs consistent conditions, a stated timeframe and no implied medical claim is the part that matters.
Shade and skin type are how people browse
Beauty catalogues are browsed by problem, not category. Filtering by collection and price makes a shopper read every product to find the one for oily, sensitive or deeper skin.
Repeat purchase is the business model
Subscriptions and refills are where beauty margin lives, and the decision has to be legible where the choice is made. Whichever app you use, the storefront is what decides whether anyone notices.
Speed is a beauty problem specifically
Big photography, video, review widgets, quizzes, subscription scripts. Every one of them earns its place or costs you the visit.
What we have built
We are not going to show you a wall of logos. What we can show you is a product we shipped, and constraints we can prove rather than adjectives we chose.
Darkroom is our skincare Shopify theme: native ingredient and INCI sections, routine merchandising, shade swatches, before-and-after, and a product page built for beauty rather than adapted to it. It carries no JavaScript framework, its motion is CSS-driven and honours reduced-motion, and its build fails if any single page ships more than 16 KB of minified theme JavaScript — a budget the theme enforces on itself, so it cannot drift upward release by release.
The same team builds the themes and does the client work, which is the actual argument for hiring us: the storefront patterns we would build for you are ones we maintain as a product rather than assemble once and hand over.
How we work
A short discovery to understand the catalogue, the claims you can make, and where the current storefront leaks. Then design and build in the open, with a staging store you can click through as it happens rather than a reveal at the end. Then launch, and a period afterwards where we are still on hand — the fortnight after launch is when the real questions arrive.
You get the code and the documentation. Nothing is locked to us.
What it costs
Published, because a range you can act on is worth more to you than a number we protect. Figures are USD and exclude VAT where it applies.