Year 2025
Platform Shopify
Industry Gifts & Homeware
Disciplines
Design Development E-commerce
Lead Developer

WINNIES 1975

A high-street gift & homeware shop, brought into the digital world — Shopify storefront with click & collect, delivery, and a wider audience beyond the front door.

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Overview

How do you take a much-loved local shop and open it up to the whole country?

Winnies 1975 is a gift and homeware store with a loyal local following and a carefully curated range that turns over fast. The shop floor was thriving — but anyone outside the area had no way to browse or buy. The brief was to extend the shop's reach without losing the warmth that made it a destination in the first place.

The build had to support two very different shoppers from day one: regulars who'd rather reserve a piece and pop in to collect it, and new customers further afield expecting fast delivery and a smooth checkout. All while keeping the admin manageable for a small team running a busy shop.

The Challenge
  • No online presence — sales limited to the shop floor
  • Fast-moving curated range, frequent restocks
  • Two audiences: locals and a wider UK market
  • Small team — the site has to run itself
My Role
  • Brand-led visual design
  • Custom Shopify theme build
  • Click & collect and delivery flows
  • Client training and launch support
Deliverables
  • Shopify storefront
  • Click & collect at checkout
  • Nationwide delivery options
  • Gift cards and curated collections
The Process

From Shop Floor
to Storefront

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01
Discovery

Spent time in the shop and with the team — what regulars buy, how the range turns over, which lines have a long tail of demand beyond the local area, and how the team manages stock today.

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02
Strategy

Shopify as the foundation — payments, shipping, gift cards and collection options come built in, so the team gets one calm place to manage the business. Mapped out collections that mirror how customers shop the floor.

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03
Design

A warm, considered visual language — generous typography, unhurried layouts, and product photography doing the heavy lifting. The site had to feel like the shop, not a generic template with a logo on it.

D
04
Development

Custom Shopify theme with click & collect at checkout for locals, nationwide delivery for everyone else, and a collection structure tuned to how the range actually sells — new in, curated picks, gift-by-occasion.

D
05
Launch

Soft-launched with a focused first drop to test fulfilment end-to-end before going wide. Hands-on training so the team can add stock, update collections and edit content without picking up the phone.

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Step 1 / 5
The Solution

Built to
Travel.

A storefront that carries the feel of the shop into a wider audience — click & collect for locals, delivery for everyone else, and a calm Shopify admin the team can run themselves.

winnies1975.co.uk
Winnies 1975 storefront
01

Click &
Collect

Locals can reserve a piece online and pick it up in-store — no shipping, no waiting, and a reason to keep coming through the door. Built into checkout, not bolted on.

02

Nationwide
Delivery

UK-wide shipping for new customers further afield, with packaging and unboxing that lives up to the in-store experience. The shop's reach is no longer tied to its postcode.

03

Easy to
Run

Adding a new product, opening a curated collection, or updating the homepage are all small jobs the team can do between customers. The site stays fresh because keeping it fresh isn't a project.

Reflections

What I
Learned.

First-website projects for an established shop sit between brand and operations. These are the things I'd carry into the next one.

01
Local and national aren't the same shopper

Locals want to reserve and collect; new customers expect fast delivery and a polished checkout. Designing for both from day one — instead of layering one on later — kept the experience calm for everyone.

02
Curation is the product

For a shop that turns its range over fast, the homepage and collections are doing as much work as any single product page. Building structures the team could keep fresh without rebuilding anything mattered more than any one feature.

03
The site has to feel like the shop

The biggest risk on a project like this is a generic Shopify theme that quietly flattens the brand. Spending design time on tone, pace and photography paid back the moment regulars said it felt like Winnies, not just a shop with the Winnies name on it.

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