I began working with Original Duckhead in 2022, initially customising a purchased Shopify theme based on an existing Figma design.
As those changes became more frequent, I identified the limitations of relying on a store bought Shopify theme and eventually moved the store onto my own custom theme. This gave Original Duckhead a much lighter, faster, and more maintainable foundation, without the unnecessary overhead and restrictions that often come with pre-built themes.
A key issue with store-bought themes is that major theme updates often require custom code to be re-applied manually, which can become extremely time-consuming when a store has been heavily tailored. By moving to a custom-built theme, I created a setup that was far easier to manage long term, making it simpler to introduce improvements, support ongoing design changes, and avoid repeated redevelopment work each time the theme needed updating.
The theme is built using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, AJAX, Shopify Liquid, and SplideJS for sliders, with a strong focus on performance, flexibility, and clean front-end implementation. This has allowed me to optimise both site speed and overall usability while supporting the brand through multiple visual updates and continued refinements. With another rebrand on the horizon, having a custom-built theme in place has made it far easier to adapt the storefront without having to rebuild around the limitations of a third-party template.
Alongside development, I continue to support the store through regular updates, ongoing improvements, and general website management as the business grows. Since its early stages, Original Duckhead has developed into a six-figure-per-year business and has grown to the point of upgrading to Shopify Plus, reflecting the scale and momentum of the brand. The quality of the storefront was also recognised externally when Original Duckhead was featured in a Shopify blog post on homepage design, further highlighting the strength of the site and brand presentation.
Overall, this has been a long-term partnership focused on building a faster, cleaner, and more adaptable Shopify experience that can evolve with the business. It has been especially rewarding to help support a brand through multiple stages of growth while creating a custom theme infrastructure that is far better suited to long-term development than the original purchased setup.
Featured in Shopify's Blog - "18 Best Homepage Design Examples and Principles (2025)":