A Custom Shopify Build for a Couture Atelier
Rashmi Kumari is a couture house that was running its entire order pipeline through Instagram DMs and WhatsApp. No storefront. No checkout. No way to quote international buyers in their own currency.
We built the Shopify store, set up geolocation-based multi-currency, automated order notifications over email and WhatsApp, and now run the day-to-day store operations.
Rashmi Kumari is a couture house. Every piece is designed, fitted, and finished by hand. There are no SKUs to manage in the way a normal Shopify store has SKUs. There are collections, and there are commissions, and most of what gets sold lives somewhere between the two.
That model was being run on Instagram and WhatsApp. A customer would see a piece on Instagram, send a DM, get bounced to WhatsApp, and the whole order would get negotiated message by message. Pricing happened in the chat. Sizing happened in the chat. Payment happened in the chat. There was no record of the order outside that thread.
International buyers made the problem worse. The atelier had customers in different countries who all wanted to see prices in their own currency. With no platform to show prices on, every currency question came back to a person, and every quote that should have taken seconds took days.
Day-to-day was the other half of the gap. New collections needed somewhere to live. Featured pieces needed to rotate. Press hits and celebrity moments needed a surface that did them justice. Images needed to be optimized so the work loaded properly on a phone. None of that was happening, because none of it had a platform behind it.
Rashmi Kumari needed a real Shopify store, built around the way a couture house actually sells. And someone to run it.
Orders Lived in DMs
Every commission started in an Instagram DM and moved to WhatsApp. There was no storefront, no checkout, no order record outside the chat thread.
Currency Conversion Was Manual
International customers wanted prices in their own currency. With no platform to display prices on, every conversion question came back to a person. Quotes that should have been instant took days.
Collections Had Nowhere to Live
Lookbooks, featured pieces, press hits, and celebrity moments lived on Instagram and in PDFs. There was no sales surface that did the work justice.
Nobody Had Time to Run a Store
Even if the store existed, the atelier did not have the bandwidth to manage it. Collection updates, featured rotations, image optimization. None of that fits inside a couture atelier's day.
What we built for Rashmi Kumari
Five connected pieces, all on Shopify. Custom storefront, geolocation-based currency, automated order notifications, dynamic celebrity and press surfaces, and ongoing store operations run by us.
Custom Shopify Storefront
We built the Shopify store from zero. Custom theme, custom collection structure, made-to-order and commission flows treated as first-class concepts. Not a template fashion site retrofitted to fit a couture brand.
Geolocation-Based Multi-Currency Checkout
Prices display in the customer's local currency based on where they are visiting from. Conversion math, payment, and checkout all happen inside the platform. International buyers see local prices on the product page and check out in the same currency.
WhatsApp and Email Order Notifications
Every order triggers an automated email to the team and an automated WhatsApp message to the customer. The chat-based relationship Rashmi's customers expect is still there. The manual coordination behind it is not.
Dynamic Celebrity Slider and Press Integration
A celebrity slider that updates without a redesign and custom press integrations that pull features into the storefront. When a new feature lands, it goes live on the site without a developer ticket.
Not a project. A partnership.
A Working Storefront
The atelier now sells on a real Shopify store. Customers see collections the way Rashmi wants them seen, and they can buy without a single message exchange.
International Buyers See Local Prices
Customers in different countries land on prices in their own currency. Conversion and checkout happen on the platform, not in a DM. The currency conversation is finished before it starts.
Operations Off the Team's Plate
Collection updates, featured rotations, press surfaces, image optimization. All of it runs out of Autonomous. The atelier spends its day on the craft and the photography, not on the admin.
“I needed someone who could actually do all of it. The store, the payments, the notifications, the daily updates. That's what they've done.”
Questions About This Build
What is custom Shopify development for fashion brands?
Custom Shopify development for a fashion brand means building the storefront, theme, and checkout around the way the brand actually sells. For a couture atelier like Rashmi Kumari, that meant treating made-to-order and commission flows as first-class concepts, not bolting apps onto a template. We built the theme, the collection structure, the celebrity slider, and the press integration directly into Shopify.
How does Shopify multi-currency work with geolocation?
Shopify Markets and a geolocation layer detect where a customer is visiting from and display prices in their local currency. Conversion happens automatically. The customer pays in their currency, the store receives in its base currency, and the team does not have to quote anything by hand. For Rashmi Kumari, that ended the back-and-forth of customers asking for prices in their own currency.
Can Shopify send order notifications to WhatsApp?
Yes, with a WhatsApp Business API integration tied to Shopify order webhooks. Every order triggers a templated WhatsApp message to the customer. For Rashmi Kumari, that preserved the chat-based relationship customers expected from the brand and removed the manual confirmation work the team used to do.
Do you build custom Shopify themes from scratch?
Yes. For Rashmi Kumari, we built the theme from zero in Liquid. Standard fashion themes assume a normal product catalog with stock counts and SKUs. A couture house does not work that way. The theme had to handle collections, commissions, and made-to-order pieces as core concepts.
Do you manage Shopify stores on an ongoing basis?
Yes. We run Rashmi Kumari's store day to day. Collection updates, featured rotations, swaps, image optimization in WebP, performance work, and any new modules the brand needs. The atelier handles creative direction and photography. We handle everything else on the platform.
How long did the Rashmi Kumari Shopify build take?
The initial build went live as a launchable storefront, and the engagement has since become ongoing. We continue to add features, manage the store, and roll out new collections as Rashmi's atelier ships them.
Let's talk about your stack.
If you're running operations on spreadsheets and disconnected systems, we've seen this before. And we know how to fix it. Not as a vendor. As your long-term business engineering partner.
Let's Talk About Your Stack ← See all case studies