Shopify stores, built by people who run one.
A Shopify store from A$4,900 and a custom theme from A$12,000 — ex GST. We also run a 10,304-product Shopify store of our own, which is why this page can talk about what breaks at 27,000 variants instead of at twenty.
The process, in five steps.
What you actually get.
The theme, written not bought
No page-builder, no bought theme with your colours in it. Liquid and CSS we wrote, which means the next change is an edit rather than a fight.
The data layer first
Tags, metafields and the rules that make products relate to each other. On our own store that is what drives “which top fits this vanity” — the theme only renders the answer.
Trade and retail in one store
Draft-order quoting with a PDF, customer-specific pricing, and a retail path that does not look like a wholesale portal.
Speed as a build constraint
Measured on the way, not audited after. This site scores 100 on Lighthouse performance across 29 live URLs; the same discipline applies to a store.
Search & Discovery, set up properly
Facets that come from your own data rather than guesses, and collection pages that can be filtered the way people actually shop.
Handover you can act on
Admin access, the theme in your account, and the decisions written down. If you leave, nothing of yours stays with us.
What it costs, from.
| What | From | Covers |
|---|---|---|
| Shopify store | A$4,900 / US$3,200 | up to 100 products |
| Custom Shopify theme | A$12,000 / US$7,900 | designed and built from scratch |
Store price covers up to 100 products; past that it is 0.15 hours a product for data, images and variants. Hourly work is A$140 / US$95. AUD is ex GST for Australian clients; USD everywhere else. Every one of these is a fixed price against a written scope before the work starts — and the cost guide shows the arithmetic, including the hours behind every addition.
The store we run ourselves.
EBS Bathroom and Plumbing Supplies is owned by this studio’s owner. We say so wherever we cite it: it is a real build with real numbers, and it is not an arm’s-length client reference. Status today: built, in final checks before launch.
What that store taught us is the only reason to read this page rather than any other agency’s. A catalogue of ten thousand products does not fail the way a catalogue of fifty does: it fails at the matching rules, at the facets, at the 6,924 individual data defects somebody has to find and log before a shopper hits one. We built the tooling for that because we needed it.
Straight answers.
Can you work with a catalogue of ten thousand products?
Yes, and it is the part of this we are actually unusual at. Our own store is 10,304 products and 27,409 variants with 935 collections, and the work that makes a catalogue that size usable is data work, not design work. If your catalogue is under a hundred products, almost any competent developer can build you a good store — we would rather tell you that than take the job on false pretences.
Do you use a bought theme?
Only if you ask us to, and then we will say what it costs you later. A bought theme is cheaper on day one and more expensive at every change after it, because you are editing somebody else’s abstraction. A custom theme is A$12,000 and it is yours.
What about apps?
Fewer. Every app is a script on your storefront, a monthly fee and a dependency on somebody else’s uptime. We will tell you which of your current apps can be replaced by twenty lines in the theme — our free scanner exists because leftover app code is one of the most common things we find.
Do you do Shopify Plus?
Yes, and we will tell you if you do not need it. Plus is worth it for checkout extensibility, B2B at scale and multiple storefronts; it is not worth it as a performance upgrade, which is what it often gets sold as.
How do I know the store will be fast?
Because speed is a constraint during the build rather than an audit after it. We publish our own numbers: this site scores 100 for performance on every one of the 29 URLs in our release gate, and that gate fails a release. We will set the same kind of gate on your store if you want it.
Prices are published. A quote still needs a conversation.
The cost guide prices your own build from the same hours and the same rate we quote with, and the form at the bottom of it carries your estimate into the message — so the reply starts from what you chose.