- Client
- Thrdd (our own brand)
- Role
- E-Commerce Design & Development
- Timeline
- Ongoing
- Year
- 2024
- Category
- E-Commerce
Overview
Thrdd is a women’s-basketball / WNBA-adjacent apparel brand. It is our own brand. We did the brand and collection design plus a Shopify DTC storefront on a customized Dawn theme for limited-edition graphic tees — statement drops, player-named collections, and an editorial catalog. The store is offline now.
Why
Thrdd is our own women’s-basketball apparel brand, and it lives or dies on drop energy: player-named collections, statement graphics, and a catalog that has to feel like a magazine. Without an owned DTC channel, those drops would have been trapped in wholesale or Instagram checkouts.
We built the storefront so merchandising is the product. Collection storytelling, graphic-first PDPs, and variant pickers that stay on the artwork are how a seasonal design archive actually sells. That is why the work is relevant to any founder whose catalog is editorial, limited, and brand-led rather than SKU-led.
The challenge
Thrdd needed a storefront that could carry limited-edition graphic tees with a premium, editorial feel. Each seasonal drop needed its own story on the page, not a grid of leftover inventory.
What made it hard
- Limited-edition drops needed collection and PDP layouts that put the graphic first.
- Variant selection (size, colorway) had to stay fast on mobile.
- The brand work lived in seasonal design drops; the store had to keep up with each one.
Approach
We treated merchandising as the product: collection storytelling, statement-tee grids, and conversion-minded PDPs on Shopify. Design folders in the Thrdd archive cover Icons, Trailblazers, Statement, and player-named lines (Sabrina, Candace, Sue) — the storefront is how those drops reach customers.
Process
- Brand & collections: Seasonal graphic systems and drop naming so each launch has a visual story, not just SKUs.
- Shopify storefront: Featured collections, variant pickers, and a catalog tuned for statement tees.
- Merchandising: DTC collections that rotate.
What we built
- Shopify DTC catalog: Collection and product pages customized on Dawn for graphic-forward apparel.
- Variant-first PDPs: Size and colorway selection kept on the product story instead of burying it in theme chrome.
- Drop merchandising: Featured collections for limited-edition statement tees and sports apparel.
How it was built
The store ran on Shopify (now offline): a customized Dawn theme with collections, PDPs, and checkout. Design folders in the Thrdd archive cover Icons, Trailblazers, Statement, and player-named lines (Sabrina, Candace, Sue). Those systems had to map onto Shopify’s collection model.
The engineering work is merchandising UX, not a custom cart. Variant selection (size, colorway) stays on the product story. Featured collections rotate as drops land. Merchandising kept up as the brand dropped new lines instead of freezing a launch homepage.
Stack
- Shopify: DTC storefront and checkout
- Customized Dawn theme: Collections, PDPs, variant flows
Outcomes
- DTC: Shopify storefront
- Shopify: Checkout and catalog
- Drops: Limited-edition tee collections
- DTC: Brand-owned channel
Wins
- Owned DTC on Shopify checkout, not a third-party marketplace.
- Collection and PDP layouts customized on Dawn for graphic-forward tees.
- Variant pickers that keep size and colorway on the artwork.
- Seasonal drop merchandising (Icons, Trailblazers, player-named lines) as first-class collections.
Hard parts
- Editorial on Dawn: Statement graphics needed a visual story per collection, built by customizing Dawn rather than accepting its defaults.
- Mobile variants: Size and colorway had to stay fast on a phone without burying the graphic under theme chrome.
- Drops keep moving: The brand work lives in seasonal design folders. The storefront had to absorb new lines without a redesign each drop.
Services
- Customized Shopify Dawn Theme
- Collection & PDP UX
- Product Variant Flows
- Brand-Forward Merchandising