Retail and ecommerce
Melbourne. We rebuild small retail so the shop keeps selling after it closes.
- Industries
- 003 / 003
The argument
For a small retailer with a considered product, the site is only half the shop. The other half is the inbox. A three-thousand-dollar ebike is not an impulse. The questions are range, road legality, and whether it survives a real commute, and they arrive at eleven at night in an Instagram message from someone who has read the product page twice and is still not sure.
Most ecommerce advice assumes the product closes itself, so it is all funnel and abandoned-cart email. That advice was written for shops with a support team. A shop run by one or two people has a different bottleneck entirely, and the bottleneck is answering: every message, every night, fast enough that the buyer has not already gone somewhere else. Miss that, and the conversion rate on the storefront is a measurement of nothing.
And the storefront itself is usually bought rather than built. A theme costs a couple of hundred dollars, arrives carrying somebody else’s layout and somebody else’s page weight, and every other shop that bought it looks the same, which is survivable until the thing you sell depends on looking considered. Changing its colours does not make it yours.
What we build
So we build both halves. The storefront, designed first, then hand-built into a Shopify theme in Liquid with nothing purchased underneath it, and the machine behind it: an assistant answering every direct message, handing over to a human on two rails the moment it should, and a live queue the owner runs from his phone. A shop that sells while it is closed, and a way to catch the ones it cannot.
Shipped: F1 Ebikes one brand, two systems. A storefront designed from scratch and hand-built into a Shopify theme in Liquid, and an AI assistant answering every Instagram DM through ManyChat and n8n with human handoff on two rails and a live ops queue.
Questions
- Is a custom Shopify theme worth it over a bought one?
- It depends on whether the product needs to look considered. A bought theme costs a couple of hundred dollars and arrives carrying somebody else’s layout and somebody else’s page weight, and every other shop that bought it looks the same. Changing its colours does not make it yours. We design first and hand-build into Shopify in Liquid, with nothing purchased underneath it.
- Why do small online shops lose sales at night?
- Because the site is only half the shop and the other half is the inbox. A considered product raises real questions, and they arrive at eleven at night as a direct message from somebody who has read the product page twice. A shop run by one or two people cannot answer those fast enough, and the storefront’s conversion rate is then a measurement of nothing.
- What does an AI assistant do for a small retailer?
- It answers the direct messages the owner cannot get to, out of hours, and hands over to a human the moment it should. For F1 Ebikes that is every Instagram DM through ManyChat and n8n, with handoff on two rails and a live queue the owner runs from his phone, so the shop keeps selling while it is closed and nothing is dropped.
- Does standard ecommerce advice work for a shop run by two people?
- Mostly not. Funnels and abandoned-cart email were written for shops with a support team behind them. A two-person shop has a different bottleneck entirely, and it is answering: every message, every night, fast enough that the buyer has not already bought somewhere else.