Approved look on an existing shop
The brand is not named here.
They already had a live shop. They also had an approved visual prototype. The two were not the same system. The job was to put the approved look on the shop — not to invent a new brand, and not to rebuild how people pay.
Situation
The prototype was the specification: pages, type, colour, motion, product layouts. It was not a theme. Dropping it onto the live store would have broken cart, plans, and reviews. Redesigning it would have broken the approval.
The shop already owned products, prices, availability, and checkout. Subscriptions and reviews already lived in tools they paid for. Those facts had to stay the source of truth. Prototype numbers were not.
Work had to happen on an unpublished draft. The live theme stayed up.
Diagnosis
The fitting system is a theme that matches the prototype, not a second storefront. Buy the apps that already do billing and reviews. Build the look, the product pages, and a plan selector that reads the shop’s real plans. An add-on is a second cart line, not a painted checkbox.
The merchant still edits images, copy, and blocks in the theme editor. I do not hardcode their catalog into the theme.
What I built
- A new theme from a clean shop baseline — not a fork of the live theme
- The approved routes: home, story, editorial pages, a journal on native posts, and separate product layouts
- Cart, search, account, and the other shop surfaces kept, restyled to the same system
- A theme-owned plan selector that submits the shop’s plan id through the native product form
- Review marks from the review tool; lists through the approved app surface, not a scrape
- Editor settings and blocks so they can change photography and hide a card when a bundle is not ready
- Visual and interaction checks against the prototype; reduced-motion respected
- A publish checklist. Going live is their switch, with the old theme kept as rollback
Outcome
The approved look exists as a real theme, checked on an unpublished draft. I am not claiming their public URL here, and I am not naming the brand.
What I cannot show yet
The name, the live shop, the prototype, and any screenshot. A distinctive public storefront is easy to recognize. Permission first, then artifacts.