A Custom Shopify Theme and 3D Bag Maker for Handmade Bike Bags (Case Study)
My brother Steve runs Wild North Gear. He’s been making bike frame bags by hand in Canmore, Alberta since 2016, and his first Shopify store did nearly $28k in online sales.
We just launched his new site. It has a new look based on his bags, a custom Shopify theme, and a 3D bag maker where riders can design a bag for their own bike.
The problem
A frame bag fits inside the triangle of a bike frame. Every frame is a different shape, so every bag Steve makes is made to measure.
His old store didn’t help much with that. It ran on a stock Shopify theme, the frame bag was one product with 15 options, and riders were asked to send their bike details. There was nothing showing them how to measure, which colours they could pick, or what their bag would look like.
So it all happened in Instagram DMs. That’s where most of his customers find him anyway, and a single order could take hours of back and forth before he could start cutting.
The store also didn’t look anything like his bags. Steve’s work has its own style, and the site looked like a hundred other Shopify stores. People buying a custom frame bag are comparing him with the best makers in Canada and the US, and his site needed to hold its own.
The look
We started with what Steve already had: his bags, his fabric, his workshop, his logo and his Instagram photos.
Steve cuts every bag from pattern pieces, so we made the site look like a sewing pattern. Labelled pieces, measurements, a cutting-mat grid, all filled in with colours taken from his actual fabric. We kept his logo exactly as it was.
We built a working prototype first, so Steve could click through it before anything went into Shopify.
The bag maker
This is the part that gets Steve out of his DMs.
Riders measure their frame (the page shows them how) and type in the numbers. The 3D bag changes shape to match as they type, and they can spin it around to see both sides. If the numbers don’t make sense, it tells them.
Then they pick a style, a fabric, and colours for each panel, the zip cover and the patch. They only see the colours Steve actually has in that fabric. If they don’t want to choose, they can hit “Surprise me” and let Steve pick. If they want something different, they can ask for a custom quote instead.
All of those rules came from Steve. We sent him a list of questions about fabrics, colours, prices and how he likes to make things, and built the bag maker around his answers.
Most of his customers come from Instagram, so we designed it for phones first.
What Steve gets
When a rider orders, their design comes with it. The order page asks for their bike’s make, model and year, checks the measurements, and lets them add a photo of the bike if they want.
Steve gets a picture of the bag they designed, along with the measurements, fabric and colours. He knows exactly what to make before he cuts anything, without scrolling back through a DM thread.
We also added his feed bag, The Raccoon, to the order page at $10 off when it’s bought with a frame bag.
What else we did
- Built a custom Shopify theme from scratch to replace the stock one
- Added a section for finished bags that are ready to buy
- Rewrote the custom work page so it leads with bike gear
- Cleaned up the store’s products, collections and menus, and redirected old links
- Wrote the titles and descriptions that show up in Google
- Made a short launch video
Results so far
The first store did nearly $28k in online sales. The new one just launched, so I’ll update this once there are numbers.