Shopify Agency in London for Fashion and Luxury Brands
Not Studio is a Shopify agency in London that builds fashion e-commerce for contemporary and luxury brands, and a Shopify Partner since 2016. We work with some incredible international fashion houses, and some of them have been going for decades now, or even hundreds of years. But some of our favourite brands are completely new startups, a founder with a brave idea that needs a digital home to tell its story. We fairly strictly work in the fashion and lifestyle industry. It’s our focus now, our happy place, and to be fair, we’re really good at it.
A Shopify Store Is a Storytelling Exercise
When a fashion brand comes to us for a Shopify store, it normally breaks down into two categories. We have clients who already have a store that looks tired and isn't fulfilling the needs of the business, because it doesn't represent the business any more and sales are generally a little bit down. And then we have new startup businesses that are a bit green about the opportunities they could grab with the exciting new brand they're launching.
Both of them normally miss the point, which is that the digital experience, the Shopify store, should be a storytelling exercise. Why does this brand exist? Who is it for? And what problem is it solving in my life? As simple as it sounds, keeping the design ethos true to the brand's guidelines and the brand strategy will open up the commerce naturally. So our job is to not let the technology get in the way of a good brand story. Every page is a signal that the brand is authentic and has a story to tell.
Simple Enough to Run, Powerful Enough to Grow
Sometimes clients come to us with an overcomplicated list of needs. They may have got it from a colleague or from AI, or just read that's what they need, and we're there to tell them exactly what's useful and what they don't need, and to keep the e-commerce simple enough to operate, but powerful enough to grow.
Clients who've been in business for a while, with an existing site, need an app evaluation. They need to look at every bit of software attached to the store. Is it useful? Can we not already build that in? Does it have code that needs stripping out? A good audit takes away all the noise and just leaves the powerful features that are in the theme, or that we can build in. Most new startups don't have that issue, but they can over-ask for features they've heard of, which can either improve the experience on their site or just get in the way of a good sale. Our job is to sift through those and make sure the right tool is in place for the right job.
Content for any site is vital. The photography and film on the site are the whole visual world of the brand. They need careful art direction and a point of view. When we're building a site, it's always great to have a client who's had that work done already. It's something we offer as well, through our content team, but the build is a much quicker and more enjoyable experience when the client already has a great set of assets in place.
Theme or Bespoke? We Build Both
We offer both: a completely bespoke website, from wireframes and fashion website design all the way up to the final site, or a fully configured and customised theme. The vast majority of brand owners go for the customised theme, as it's the most cost-efficient way of getting a website that looks bespoke and is ultra-polished.
When we start with a Shopify 2.0 theme, what we get is a starting place that's been thoroughly tested. It's like the chassis of a car, or the structure of a well-made home. Everything is built on top of that. With that in place, we can guarantee that no two websites ever look the same, but they all perform to a high standard. What typically gets customised is everything. We fill the site with the brand's fonts, colours and art direction, the character of its strategy and storytelling, a custom way of showing the products that suits only those products, and the personality of the brand through the journal, storytelling sections on product pages and the backstories of the founders.
We still have clients who need a completely bespoke Shopify website. They tend to be more corporate, where a committee needs to sign off the design, or there are international rules and every pixel needs to be in its place, and we totally get that. A bespoke website is also worth it if the site needs to work in an unusual way, such as a highly customised product, an unusual buying process, or a site closely tied into an unusual business plan. These can be anything from fabric houses to integrated fashion and experiential brands. They're technically completely different builds, but the end result is a beautiful, commercial website.
Connolly: A First Online Store for a Heritage House
Connolly is a British heritage brand going back to 1878, with a history of supplying leather to some of the world's most prestigious car manufacturers and even the Houses of Parliament. Isabel Ettedgui reached out to us when she had a beautiful Mayfair store and an incredible international following, but no transactional website. So the challenge was to take that very distinctive physical retail experience online without losing any of its British character. We designed, wireframed and built their first Shopify store, combining editorial content, which housed their campaign photography, with room for some strong storytelling.
Isabel was adamant that it couldn't be just another luxury e-commerce website. It had to capture the history, the craftsmanship and the understated British elegance of the brand. What we really needed to do was turn her international interest into international sales, and from the minute we switched it on, that's exactly what happened. Her very first sale was to a famous producer in the Hollywood Hills, and in online terms, she never looked back. The website housed all the clothing collections, men's and women's, along with collectibles, objets d'art and unique collaborations. Shopify is such a powerful tool, especially when a brand has stories like these to tell, and it's fair to say the online store became the larger part of the business.
Fernando Jorge: Luxury in the Extreme, Online
When we first met Fernando Jorge, he was already an established luxury jewellery brand with a loyal private client base and international stockists. He had recently updated his physical showrooms and refreshed his visual identity, including the typography, colour palette and logo, within a new set of guidelines. The only piece of the jigsaw missing was a more modern, scalable e-commerce platform that would also double up as a showcase for the international showrooms. The existing store was built on WooCommerce, so we decided to move it over to Shopify, a much more robust platform that's able to tell the story fully.
The major opportunity was to strengthen direct-to-consumer sales and bring the whole look and feel of the online experience in line with the quality of the jewellery, which is luxury in the extreme. The website needed to feel like a luxury brand experience and to feel shoppable, but not overly commercial, while making the platform easier for the internal team to manage. We completely redesigned the front end with a clean, contemporary design and a very strong editorial look, with stronger use of campaign photography, allowing the jewellery and the craftsmanship to wow their online clients. It wasn't just about making the website look beautiful. It was also about making it easier to shop and easier for the team to manage, sending new clients to the showrooms, and giving the brand a stronger foundation for direct-to-consumer growth.
Camila Martin Barla: A New Label, From the Name Up
Camila Martin Barla is a good example of how we work with a fashion brand from the very beginning. Camila came to us with a strong vision for a new conscious luxury label. She needed help stress testing the name, the brand strategy, the art direction for the shoots, and finally a contemporary Shopify store to house it all. We chose a beautiful, simple theme and wove her new brand strategy through it until it was entirely her own.
One of our favourite details was the campaign photography. We experimented with a flatbed scanner to create distorted images of the garments, which gave the brand a visual language of its own and made the store part art gallery, part fashion brand. Rather than delivering a logo or a website, we helped build the whole brand from the ground up, right through to its commercial launch.
Sneak in Peace: A Shopify Platform Built From Scratch
Sneak in Peace wasn't just a startup, it was a fundamentally different kind of e-commerce store. It married elements of Asian video shopping with a luxury multi-brand experience like Farfetch, and carries a heavily curated set of collections, nearly 30,000 products from more than 440 brands, from the most prized luxury sneakers to avant-garde perfumes. It's a luxury discovery portal, all on Shopify, and an extreme version of our bespoke service.
We created everything: the name, the identity, and a bespoke Shopify platform that gives fashion content and commerce equal weight. We also built Sneak TV, a 24-hour shoppable fashion film channel where people discover products through film and buy them directly from the brands. The site has been running for about five years and gets more than 1.6 million visits a year from Google search alone. If anything, it shows how flexible Shopify really is.
How a Shopify Build Runs, From First Call to Launch
The whole build takes between six and twelve weeks, depending on how quickly things are signed off and how complete the assets are when we start.
What we need from you is a well-documented set of assets, the product spreadsheets with stock, inventory and size variants, and as much copy in your own voice as you can give us, including the about page, terms and conditions, journal posts and the brand's story. We tell the brand's story across the whole store, and Shopify gives us the tools to do it.
A First Conversation, Then Discovery
A founder, a new brand, an established brand or a team from a fashion house gets in touch, and we talk about whether we're the right fit for each other and how a new Shopify store can add value and solve problems. Once the contract is signed, the first meeting is discovery. It's a bit like therapy: you lie down and talk us through the worries, problems, pinch points and ambitions of the brand, usually for one to two hours. We go through what's gone before and what hasn't worked, sites you like and sites you don't, and we dig into the psychology of why the brand exists.
Choosing the Framework
Nine times out of ten, we build on an existing Shopify 2.0 theme. We sift through hundreds to find the ones whose features suit the brand's needs, then present a shortlist for sign-off.
The First Version, Then Polish
The team builds the first version of the store, which tends to be about 95% there. That usually takes around six weeks. You give feedback on the first version, and the team refines those areas and finishes the rest of the store.
Final Review and Launch
The final review is about a week before launch. We agree the best launch date with you and we're on hand on the day, whether the new store replaces an old one or it's the brand's first.
After Launch, the Store Is Yours to Run
For 30 days after launch we fix bugs, make sure everything's running properly, and are there for reassurance. After that, about half of our clients keep us on a retainer as their technical team, which is a cost-effective way of having an in-house development team for additional work, changes, updates and reporting. It depends on what the team needs.
One thing we're proud of is that every store we build can be run by the client from day one. There's no need to retain us unless you want our expertise alongside your own team.
When We'll Tell You No
We sometimes turn a project down if the brand doesn't have the right assets to bring the store to life, and doesn't have the means or the processes to create them. You can't launch a store without the right content in place. We also have to believe in the business plan. These stores are a collaboration with the brand. We want them to succeed, to be commercial, to be creative interpretations of the brand, and to be stores we're proud of.
If we don't believe in the plan or the founders, we politely step to one side. On the whole, though, we're there to aid and abet the imaginative ideas founders have, whether that's bringing a new brand to the world or helping an established one re-establish itself.
Shopify FAQs
The questions founders and brand teams ask us most before a Shopify build.
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Yes. Not Studio has been a Shopify Partner since April 2016 and has built Shopify stores for fashion and luxury brands for over a decade, including Connolly, Fernando Jorge and King & Tuckfield. The same team designs the store, builds it and can make the photography and film that go on it.
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Between six and twelve weeks from the discovery meeting to launch. The first version is usually ready in about six weeks. What decides the rest is how quickly feedback comes back and whether the product data, copy and imagery are ready when we start.
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It depends on whether the store is a customised Shopify 2.0 theme or a bespoke build, and on how much content needs making. The customised theme is the more cost-efficient route, and most of our clients take it. After a first conversation we'll send you our prices, or for larger projects talk the budget through with you directly.
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Yes, and they're some of our favourite projects, from Camila Martin Barla to Sneak in Peace. If you're starting a label, our fashion startup page explains how we work with new brands.
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Yes. We moved Fernando Jorge from WooCommerce to Shopify and redesigned the store at the same time, and for any established store we audit the apps and code it has collected first.
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Yes. Our content team art directs and produces photography and film, so the store and its imagery come from one team with one point of view.
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Not Studio is a London fashion creative agency. Our directors all work remotely, and the team comes together in offices in London, Los Angeles and Cologne, which are places to make the work rather than to receive clients.
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Nearly all the fashion e-commerce we build is on Shopify, and if a brand is on another platform, we'll usually suggest moving it across, as we did for Fernando Jorge.
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Yes. For Payal Khandwala we built multi-currency checkout and a fully flipped Arabic version of the store for her customers in the Middle East.
Shopify Stores We've Built for Fashion and Luxury Brands
Connolly
British heritage, taken online for the first time. We designed, wireframed and built Connolly’s first Shopify store, with editorial content and campaign photography that carry the brand’s history, craftsmanship and understated British character.
Fernando Jorge
A luxury jeweller moved from WooCommerce to Shopify, with an editorial store that sends clients to the showrooms.
Haze Underthings
We helped launch Haze Underthings on Shopify, with calm, editorial styling and a slightly subversive point of view.
King & Tuckfield
We built King & Tuckfield's first Shopify store in 2018, then came back to move it to Shopify 2.0, with room for the storytelling the label runs on.
Makette
A clean, architectural Shopify store that follows the modular, Bauhaus-inspired thinking behind Makette’s products.
The London Sock Exchange
We moved The London Sock Exchange to Shopify and built its subscription service, keeping the brand’s bold personality and making the store easy to shop.
Sneak in Peace
A luxury discovery portal, built on Shopify from scratch. We created the name, the identity and a bespoke platform carrying nearly 30,000 products from more than 440 brands, with Sneak TV, a 24-hour shoppable fashion film channel.
Camila Martin Barla
A new Swiss luxury label, built from the name up, with a Shopify store that’s part gallery, part fashion brand.
More Shopify Stores We've Built
Tell Us About the Brand
If you have a brand with a story to tell and a store that isn't telling it yet, or a brave idea that needs a home, tell us about it. We'll start with a conversation about whether we're the right fit.
THE WORK AROUND THE WORK
A store can only tell the story a brand already has. Naming, strategy and identity come first, and we do those too.
A store is one kind of site we build. Lookbooks, portfolio and brand platforms get the same editorial standard.
Product pages live or die on the photography. We shoot campaigns and product imagery built for the crop, the grid and the zoom.
Templates don’t sell products, imagery does. We make the campaigns, film and product content the store runs on.