What this is
The new storefront, running
A real Shopify storefront with the new brand identity and the information architecture from the proposal in place. It lives on its own test environment, so every page can be opened and clicked through the same way a customer would, well before any of it publishes to pepperellcrafts.com.
The catalog inside is the live pepperellcrafts.com catalog itself, updated so every product carries the categories and the fields covered in the proposal. Material, dimensions, country of origin, page count on books, breaking strength on cords, wick type on candle wicking, each piece of info comes from what pepperellcrafts.com publishes today.
A small strip on the homepage, on the shipping page, and on every product page now spells out the shop facts customers usually want to confirm before they buy: free shipping over $48, ships in one business day, 30-day returns, 97% five-star across 233 verified reviews.
Brand identity
The brand book, on every page
The look from the printed brand book is on the storefront top to bottom, and the test environment shows it on real pages.
Typography
Poppins carries every heading and label. Zilla Slab handles the body copy and reads as a warm slab serif. The Market Pro script appears on accent words inside the largest headings, like "yours" in the homepage hero or "categories" in the catalog section, the same way it does in the brand book.
Color
Brand orange leads every primary button, the announcement band, and the underline accents beneath section headings. Cream backs the heritage band, the trust strip, the cart summary card, and the static-page hero. Lavender, taupe, and warm ink fill out the rest at a quieter intensity.
Hand-drawn illustrations
Thirteen brand illustrations sit across the site at low opacity, as light texture behind the content: the cord skein loop in the homepage hero, the bead trio in the kits row, the stroke underline beneath every section heading, scissors near the contact page, and the rest.
Photography slots
Every photography slot on the homepage is wired to a product or collection on the test store. As Pepperell Crafts replaces the placeholder shots with finished art, the storefront picks them up automatically, with no code change needed.
Catalog
Seven categories
The Shop menu on pepperellcrafts.com today lists each Pepperell brand in turn (Stretch Magic, REXLACE®, Bonnie Braid, Parachute Cord, Silkies, Pony Bead Lacing, POM POMS, and the rest). The branded build groups all of those into seven category tiles keyed on the project a visitor is making, rather than the brand that makes the cord. Brand pages still live underneath as filters, so anyone who already shops by Pepperell brand keeps their familiar shortcut.
- Cords & Lacing 63
- Wicking & Candle Making 44
- Beads, Findings & Closures 43
- Kits, Books & Patterns 43
- Wood, Slates & Naturals 32
- Tools & Workshop 25
- Decor, Toys & Finished Pieces 23
The filter rail
Each category page opens with a filter rail on the left side. Visitors narrow the grid by material, project type, color, skill level, audience, and small flags like made in USA or kit. Active filters appear as small chips above the grid and clear in one click.
The filter values come from product fields on each item. Anything that's on a product page in the Shopify admin can become a filter, and editing those fields is the same as editing a product.
Page addresses
Links across the site are written in plain English. The cords category address ends in cords-lacing, a product address ends in the product name, the FAQ ends in frequently-asked-questions. Filtered grids stay shareable as links, so a customer can copy a filtered view and the next person opens the same grid.
How a product lands in a category
The mapping was generated from each product's existing tags and live description, so paracord listings land in Cords and Lacing, a candle wick in Wicking and Candle Making, a slate chalkboard in Wood, Slates and Naturals. A small set of edge cases was hand-checked against the live page.
Reassigning a product later is a single field edit on its Shopify admin product page, no developer needed.
Seven instead of seventeen
A first-time visitor on pepperellcrafts.com today has to know in advance that Bonnie Braid, Parachute Cord, REXLACE®, and Cotton Craft Cord are all cord. The seven-category arrangement removes that prerequisite for newcomers without taking the brand shortcut away from returning shoppers who already know what they want.
Page by page
What sits on each surface
A side-by-side look at each surface on the branded build and the same surface on pepperellcrafts.com today. Both columns describe what's there, factually.
Inside the product page
How a product page reads
The single piece of the storefront a buyer spends the most time on. Every block below is on the test store right now, on every product.
Spec table
Beneath the description sits a spec table with rows for material, dimensions, format, page count, ISBN, breaking strength, color count, country of origin, and others. Each row reads from a field on the product in the Shopify admin, so updating a value is editing the product itself.
Use cases, How to use, Care
Below the spec table sits a tabbed block. The Use cases tab was written per product against the live page, so a candle kit talks about candle making and a paracord listing talks about lanyards and survival bracelets. Any tab can be edited per product from its admin page.
Color swatches that swap the photo
Each color variant carries a small swatch. Clicking a swatch swaps the main gallery photo to the matching variant image where one exists. Around two hundred color names are mapped to brand-styled swatches, including pattern fills like camo, tie-dye, rainbow, and holographic.
Sticky add-to-cart on mobile
On a phone, the add-to-cart button shows up pinned to the bottom of the screen once the inline button scrolls off, so the buy action stays in thumb reach as a visitor reads the description.
Social feeds
TikTok plays in page. Instagram does not.
Both feeds appear on the homepage. They behave a little differently, and the difference comes from the platforms, not from the build.
TikTok Plays in page
TikTok's public player lets their videos play inside other sites that embed them. The row of @pepperell.crafts clips on the homepage plays muted as the cursor moves over each one.
Refreshing the row is a paste-the-link task. Tap Share on a TikTok, copy the link, paste it into the section in the theme editor. Both the share link and a bare video ID work.
An auto-updating version is possible through a paid third-party service that mirrors the account, but that path adds a monthly subscription, is not always reliable, and sometimes runs against the platform's terms of service since the service downloads and serves the videos from its own server.
Instagram reels Open on instagram.com
Instagram no longer lets its reels play inside third-party pages. Pressing play on an embedded reel takes the visitor to instagram.com to watch. The behavior is the same on every site that embeds Instagram.
The build uses Instagram's official embed, so the row updates automatically whenever @pepperell.crafts posts a new reel.
Static pages
About, Contact, Shipping & Returns, FAQ
Each of these now opens with a branded hero band, then presents the content in a layout matched to the rest of the site. The text inside each page lives in Pages inside the Shopify admin, so editing the About story or the shipping copy is editing the page.
Hero band
Every static page opens with a cream hero band carrying an eyebrow, a heading with an optional Market Pro accent word, a short subhead, and one of the hand-drawn illustrations tucked into the corner.
About
Tells the story of Pepperell Crafts since 1917, with a small stat strip beneath the hero (the founding year, the years since, the count of active SKUs, and the manufacturing locations), then alternating bands of text and image that Pepperell Crafts can edit per page.
Shipping & Returns
Opens with a three-up stat strip carrying the $48 free-shipping threshold, the one-business-day ship window, and the 30-day return window. The full policy text sits beneath as before, and the page editor is the place to revise wording.
FAQ
Presents the questions as an accordion. Click a question, it expands. The list of questions and answers is edited from the page admin in plain prose, the same way the rest of the static pages are.
What's editable, what's theme
Edit everything from the admin panel
The theme handles typography, color, spacing, and layout, so all the content can be added and tweaked from the Shopify admin without any coding. The look matches the brand book because it comes from the theme, and the words and images stay in the team's hands because they come from the admin.
Editable from the Shopify admin: product titles, descriptions, tags, the value of every spec field, hero copy, category labels, page bodies, navigation labels, the announcement bar text, the TikTok video IDs, the FAQ entries, and the rest of the storefront copy. Each piece lives in the place a non-developer would look for it first.
Handled by the theme: typography, color, spacing, brand ornament placement, section layouts, the filter behavior, the cart drawer behavior, the search suggestions. These stay consistent across every page of the catalog, so the storefront matches the brand book without needing day-to-day attention.
Every section of every page carries its own settings panel inside the theme editor, so adjustments like turning the Instagram row off, swapping the homepage hero copy, or raising the free-shipping threshold sit one click away. Drop me a note any time with a question or a tweak you'd like, and I'll take care of it.