Splash is a Shopify design and branding agency in New York City. We build Shopify stores for DTC brands that need more than a template. Our work covers brand strategy, custom Shopify theme design, Shopify development, conversion rate optimization, and Klaviyo email integration. Every engagement runs through a single senior team. No handoffs, no offshore dev, no junior designers running point on your brand.
If you are a DTC brand based in New York or selling nationally, and you need a Shopify store that actually reflects the quality of your product, this page is for you.
What We Do for DTC Brands on Shopify
Most Shopify agencies either design or develop. We do both, and we do them together, because the brands that convert best are the ones where design and development decisions are made in the same room by people who understand the business objective.
Here is what a typical Splash engagement covers:
- Brand Strategy: Before we touch a single page layout, we define your positioning, visual identity, and tone of voice. For DTC brands, brand clarity is a revenue driver. Customers who understand what you stand for buy faster and return more often.
- Custom Shopify Theme Design: We design from scratch. No Turbo, no Prestige, no off-the-shelf theme with your logo swapped in. Custom design means your store looks like your brand, not like every other store on the same template.
- Shopify Development: Our developers build in Liquid, JavaScript, and Shopify’s component framework. We implement custom sections, product page logic, bundle builders, subscription integrations, and anything else your store needs to function at a high level.
- Conversion Rate Optimization: We design with conversion in mind from the first wireframe. That means smart information hierarchy, friction reduction at checkout, mobile-first layouts, and UX patterns that guide buyers without shouting at them.
- Klaviyo Email Integration: Your Shopify store and your email program need to work as a single system. We integrate Klaviyo, build out your foundational flows, and make sure your store data feeds your segmentation correctly from day one.
When DTC Brands Need a Shopify Rebuild
Not every DTC brand needs a full rebuild. But there are specific situations where continuing to iterate on a broken or outdated foundation costs more than starting clean. Here are the ones we see most often:
Launching a New DTC Brand
If you are launching into skincare, beauty, wellness, apparel, CPG, food and beverage, or any consumer category where the shelf is crowded, your store cannot look like a first attempt. Buyers in these categories are visually sophisticated. They compare you to brands that have invested seriously in their identity. A weak launch store signals a weak brand, and you do not get a second chance at a first impression with a new customer.
Replatforming from WooCommerce or Squarespace
WooCommerce and Squarespace are fine for early-stage experiments. They are not built for DTC brands that are scaling. If you are spending more time managing plugins, debugging checkout flows, or waiting on developers to push a simple copy change, you are already losing ground to brands running on properly built Shopify stores. Replatforming to Shopify, done correctly, removes operational drag and gives your team control.
Scaling Past $1M in Revenue
A store that got you to $1M will not get you to $5M. The product page that worked when you had three SKUs breaks down when you have thirty. The navigation that made sense to your first customers confuses new ones arriving from paid social. The mobile experience that was acceptable when you were spending $5K per month on ads is a conversion killer when you are spending $50K. Brands that scale past $1M in revenue almost always need a Shopify store that was built to handle that scale, not patched to approximate it.
A Brand Refresh That Requires the Site to Match
If your brand has evolved but your store has not, you have a credibility gap. New packaging, a new visual identity, a repositioning into a premium tier. None of that lands if the store still looks like version one. A brand refresh without a corresponding store redesign is money left on the table.
Entering a New Category
Beauty brands expanding into wellness. Apparel brands moving into accessories. Food and beverage brands adding a subscription tier. Each category shift brings new buyer expectations. The store needs to signal fluency in that category from the first scroll. That is not something you patch with a new banner image. It requires rethinking the experience from the ground up.
Why Brand-Led Shopify Design Converts Better Than Template Builds
This is the question we get more than any other, and the answer is not complicated. Conversion is a function of trust. Buyers trust brands that look like they know what they are doing. Template stores, by definition, look like every other store built on the same template. That visual sameness signals commodity, and commodity brands compete on price. That is not where you want to be.
Custom Shopify design, built on a clear brand strategy, does several things that templates cannot:
- It creates visual hierarchy that guides decision-making. When a buyer lands on your product page, every element, the hero image, the benefit copy, the social proof, the add-to-cart button, is placed and weighted to move them toward a purchase. Templates give you slots to fill. Custom design gives you a system that works.
- It communicates quality before a word is read. In skincare, beauty, and wellness especially, the aesthetic of your store is product packaging. If it looks cheap, the product feels cheap. If it looks considered and premium, the product earns a premium price.
- It reduces cognitive load at every step. Confused buyers do not buy. They leave. Custom design eliminates unnecessary decisions, clarifies the path to purchase, and removes friction that template layouts bake in by default.
- It gives you a foundation for paid social and email to land on. When someone clicks an ad and arrives at a store that matches the ad’s visual language, conversion rates go up. When they click and arrive at a generic template, they feel the disconnect immediately, and they leave.
Brand clarity and conversion rate are not separate conversations. They are the same conversation.
NYC DTC Brands: The Market, the Competition, the Buyer
New York is not like other markets. DTC brands based in NYC are competing for buyers who are visually literate, brand-aware, and surrounded by world-class retail and design every day. Those buyers have high standards, and they apply them to every brand they encounter online.
The DTC category in New York is also where a significant amount of national brand-building happens. The skincare founders, the apparel startups, the wellness brands, the CPG companies that go from Farmer’s Market to national distribution in three years. These are the brands that understand what brand investment actually returns. They have seen what Red Antler built for Casper and Pattern Brands. They know what serious design investment looks like. And they are evaluating Shopify agencies in NYC accordingly.
Splash works at this level. We are a Shopify agency NYC brands trust when the stakes are real. When the brand is launching into a crowded category, when the investor deck is already done and the store needs to match, when the team has tried the template route and knows it is not enough.
If you are a DTC brand in New York looking for a Shopify store redesign that is built on brand strategy rather than borrowed templates, that is exactly the engagement we run.
Verticals We Work In
Splash has built DTC Shopify stores across the following categories:
- Skincare and Beauty: High-consideration purchases where trust, ingredient storytelling, and visual premium are everything. DTC Shopify design in this category requires a deep understanding of how buyers evaluate before they buy.
- Wellness: A category defined by aspiration. Buyers are buying into a version of themselves. The store needs to sell that vision before it sells the product.
- Apparel and Accessories: Where photography, editorial layout, and sizing UX make or break conversion. Custom Shopify development in this vertical means solving for look-books, size guides, and product variant experiences that templates handle badly.
- CPG and Food and Beverage: Where brand voice and packaging need to translate perfectly to screen. Subscription logic, bundle builders, and repeat-purchase flows are core requirements in this category.
What Shopify Engagements Cost
Splash engagements for DTC brands on Shopify run from $20,000 to $60,000, depending on scope. A brand strategy plus full custom Shopify design and development for a mid-size DTC brand with ten to fifty SKUs typically lands in the $30,000 to $45,000 range. Larger catalogs, complex integrations, or brands that need identity work built from zero will sit at the higher end.
We do not quote before we understand the project. If you fill out our contact form, we will ask you the right questions and come back with a scope that reflects your actual situation, not a number pulled from a pricing page.
We are not the cheapest Shopify agency in New York. We are also not the most expensive. We are the right choice when brand strategy and Shopify development need to move together and you cannot afford to get it wrong the first time.
Shopify vs. Other Platforms
If you are evaluating whether Shopify is the right platform for your DTC brand, we have written a detailed comparison. Read our Shopify vs. WordPress breakdown to understand the operational and design trade-offs across platforms before you commit to a rebuild.
Start the Conversation
If you are a DTC brand in New York and you need a Shopify store that matches the quality of your product and the ambition of your brand, we should talk. Splash runs a focused intake process. We review your current store, understand your business objectives, and tell you honestly whether we are the right fit.
See the work we have done for DTC brands, then get in touch to start a conversation. We respond to every serious inquiry within one business day.
Shopify development NYC. DTC brand Shopify. Shopify store redesign. These are not just keyword phrases for us. They describe the exact work we do, every week, for brands that need to compete and win.
