Suginomori was a ground-up ecommerce build for a craft brewery in Narai-juku, one of Japan's historic post towns. The project was a crash course in Shopify's platform, Japanese payment integrations, and the particular challenges of selling artisanal products online.
Challenges
Placeholder — describe the core challenges. Shopify's Liquid templating constraints, integrating Japanese payment gateways, handling shipping logistics for fragile goods, and translating a physical brand experience into something that works on a screen.
Lessons Learned
Placeholder — reflect on what this project taught about ecommerce and working within platform constraints. When to customize versus when to embrace the defaults, the outsized impact of page speed on conversion, and why great product photography matters more than great code.
Delightful Discoveries
Placeholder — the moments of unexpected joy. Perhaps the first online order from a customer who'd never visited the physical brewery, a design detail that captured the feel of the post town, or a Shopify feature that solved a problem more elegantly than expected.
Status
Placeholder — describe the current state of the project. How the store is performing and what the experience revealed about building for small businesses with big stories.