Ruby
Ruby is a Devon-based timber and outdoor products retailer with a well-established customer base and a broad, complex catalogue spanning thousands of products and variants.
I was brought in to carry out a full website rebuild as the existing store had grown unwieldy and the business needed a cleaner, faster, more scalable foundation. As the project developed, it became clear that a standard Shopify theme wasn't going to be the right answer. With a catalogue of that size and complexity, a traditional theme starts to show its limitations - slower load times, constraints around how products are filtered and presented, and limited flexibility as the business grows. A headless rebuild using Shopify Hydrogen, Shopify's modern framework built on Remix, was the approach that made sense for the long term.
While the new site was being built, I also supported their existing store in parallel, carrying out ongoing maintenance to keep things running smoothly during the transition, and implementing A/B testing to better understand how customers were interacting with the site and where improvements could be made. This meant the business wasn't standing still while the rebuild was underway.
The result is a fully custom headless Shopify storefront. The build involved custom component development, deep integration with the Shopify Storefront API, and performance optimisation work to improve Core Web Vitals. Post-launch I also integrated a range of third-party tools into the new storefront, including live chat, email marketing, and analytics platforms. It's the most technically complex project in my portfolio and a strong example of what's possible when a Shopify build is approached without the constraints of an off-the-shelf theme.
“James has been an integral part of our development over the past year. He took on the rebuild of our Shopify store from the ground up, navigating the complexity of our product catalogue and delivering a custom headless storefront that’s given us a much stronger foundation to grow from. Alongside the build he kept our existing site running smoothly throughout the transition, which made the whole process far less disruptive than it could have been. James is reliable, communicative, and genuinely understands ecommerce — he’s become a trusted extension of our team and someone we continue to work with regularly.”
