Case study - Custom Shopify StoreDCV'87 Online Store

Overview

Lucien Clarke — world-renowned skateboarder and creative — approached our design partner, Swid Studio, with a bold ambition: to launch DCV’87, a premium streetwear brand with a bespoke online experience matching his distinctive style and creative vision. This wasn’t just about selling products; it was about building culture, identity, and aesthetic impact.

Swid Studio led the creative direction and brought Codisans in to turn their designs into a high-performance, fully custom headless storefront — a digital space that doesn’t just showcase the brand, but lives and breathes it.

The Creative Direction

Swid Studio — known for their design precision and cultural sensibility — took the lead in shaping DCV’87’s digital identity. They worked closely with Lucien to distill his creative vision into a bold, gritty, and expressive visual language.

Their work included:

• Visual direction and UI design
• Brand-aligned layout structures
• Creative strategy to translate Lucien’s ideas into functional web elements

Once the creative framework was in place, Swid brought Codisans on board to engineer a custom technical solution that could bring these designs to life without compromise. We ensured every pixel of Swid’s vision was faithfully translated into a fast, scalable, and easy-to-manage digital experience.

The Technical Challenge

Lucien and Swid Studio had a clear vision for DCV’87: not just a store, but a fully immersive digital extension of Lucien’s creative world. The challenge? Traditional Shopify themes couldn’t handle the level of customization and performance required.

Swid’s designs demanded:

• A fully bespoke visual experience
• Unified content and product management in a single backend
• A blog with the same creative flexibility as the storefront
• Lightning-fast performance for product drops and heavy mobile traffic

To make it work, they needed a technical partner who could translate these requirements into a robust, future-ready platform — without losing a single pixel of their creative intent. That’s where Codisans came in.

The Solution

Codisans developed a headless Shopify storefront using Shopify Hydrogen, building every component from scratch to mirror Swid Studio’s designs with precision.

What we delivered:

• Custom-Built Storefront - Every component was crafted from scratch — no templates, no constraints. This allowed us to mirror Swid Studio’s creative vision pixel for pixel, creating a brand-first digital experience.
• Unified CMS with Shopify - To keep Lucien’s workflow simple and efficient, we extended Shopify’s backend to also manage blog content, landing pages, and site copy — all from the same dashboard he uses to manage products.
• Seamless Blog Integration - The blog isn’t an afterthought — it’s a curated space for quick updates while on the move, visually aligned with the rest of the brand experience.
• Performance Optimized, Drop-Ready - Built on Hydrogen and hosted with Shopify Oxygen, the site is scalable and ready for exclusive product drops and high traffic surges.

The result: a fast, scalable, and uniquely branded platform that delivered Swid’s creative direction without compromise.

Takeaway

DCV’87 is a powerful example of how visionary design and expert engineering can come together to produce more than just an eCommerce site — this is a creative platform.

At Codisans, we partner with agencies like Swid Studio to build flexible, branded digital ecosystems that empower creators, not limit them.

Are you a creative agency or founder looking to break free from cookie-cutter eCommerce? Let’s build your vision — no templates, no compromises.