Peak Adventure

or How we built a custom ecommerce experience to match Shimoda’s flawlessly designed products.

COMPANY PROFILE

Shimoda Designs is an adventure camera bag company that provides backpacks, rollers, and accessories designed through real-world experience in extreme terrains. Founded by Ian Millar and Peter Waisnor, and born from a Kickstarter campaign in 2017, the brand has built a passionate, loyal community of outdoor and action photographers who value reliability in the harshest conditions.

VISIT SHIMODA

The Challenge

But, while Shimoda’s products set the standard for adventure photography, their fragmented digital presence was failing to reflect their premium brand and community-driven ethos.

When they approached us in 2020, their online storefront was divided across multiple websites built on Squarespace, which, while functional at a basic level, were holding back their ambitious growth plans, and with a visual design that didn’t match the brand's reputation and community-driven success.

Shimoda needed a single, robust platform capable of scaling with their business and delivering an online experience as beautiful and functional as their products. And that's exactly what they got.

The Approach

Based on the product's unique characteristics and the community's high engagement, the site had to be beautiful, functional, and easy to use. Like the backpacks.

We set out to create a robust, flexible, and scalable ecommerce ecosystem that would:

Unify Shimoda’s U.S. and EU presence on a single BigCommerce backbone.
Empower their marketing team with a no-code experience, reducing time-to-market from weeks to hours.
Enhance product storytelling with immersive galleries, video integration, and lifestyle landing pages.
Solve complex product variant challenges with custom PIM integrations and URL logic.
Scale globally with multicountry, multilanguage, and multicurrency capabilities.

The Solution(s)

We partnered with Shimoda Designs to execute a full digital transformation, migrating them to a BigCommerce platform to give their team unparalleled flexibility. Our approach was a deep, custom integration that went far beyond a simple migration.

Custom Product Variants: We engineered a solution to address a core limitation of BigCommerce's standard variant system. While BigCommerce allows for variants, it keeps the URL and product description static. To support Shimoda’s paid ad campaigns and a more dynamic user experience, we customized their Salsify PIM to send specific data to BigCommerce. Our code then interpreted this information to create a variant interface that dynamically changes the URL, product image, and description based on user selection.
Enhanced Media Gallery: For a brand focused on photographers, high-quality visuals were essential. We custom-developed a product gallery that integrates video content directly after the first image. This not only showcases the backpacks in their full glory but also gives their distributors valuable marketing assets to support their own efforts.
No-Code Experience: The new site was designed to give Shimoda's marketing team independence. Through integrations with tools like Fastr, we enabled a no-code experience for creating rich, lifestyle-focused pages. This allows them to build beautiful content quickly and on a modest budget, keeping their online presence fresh and competitive with much larger brands.
Working Integration: We also integrated key platforms, including Searchanise for a powerful on-site search, and Omnisend for email marketing, ensuring all digital touchpoints worked together flawlessly.

The Result

Shimoda now operates a stunning, cohesive ecommerce platform that mirrors the brand’s premium craftsmanship and founder-led authenticity. Key outcomes include:

A consolidated, unified digital platform, complete with multi-country, multi-language, and multi-currency support that aligns with Shimoda’s global ambition.
Real-time marketing agility, allowing their team to create and launch campaigns with autonomy and speed, empowered by no-code tools and a flexible, custom variant system.
A superior user experience, with a customized gallery and intuitive variant selection that enhances product discovery and drives conversions.
Engaging, visually rich lifestyle storytelling driving community loyalty and sales growth.

Going Strong

Five years later, our ongoing partnership with Shimoda has already led to a third design realignment, with theme integrations and new features.

The new platform finally matches the brand's reputation as market leader in adventure gear. The project not only rescued them from a fragmented online presence but also provided a foundation for continued growth.

A thoughtful, custom-built ecommerce solution to overcome platform limitations and power a robust, scalable, and visually compelling site that strengthens Shimoda's connection with its loyal community.