Hank & Woad is a one room dye studio above a bike shop in Duluth, Minnesota, run by Ingrid Halvorsen, a former textile conservator who got tired of embroidery thread that faded in a year. She buys undyed six strand cotton by the cone, winds it into eight metre skeins, and dips each skein in a fermented indigo vat between one and twelve times, so the shades run from a pale sky blue to a navy that is almost black.
Who this theme is for
A small studio that dyes or spins its own supplies for makers: embroidery floss, yarn, ribbon, tapestry wool. The buyers are stitchers who choose by colour and want to see every shade before they pay, so the page opens on the row of skeins running from light to dark, comes in close enough to count the six strands, then shows a wet skein coming out of the vat. The Editorial layout gives the shades room and keeps the type quiet, so the blue does the talking.
What was decided in the brief
The style is Editorial on its third variant. The primary is near black for type, the background is a warm cream close to undyed cotton, and the accent is a periwinkle blue that sits in the middle of the twelve shades, so the buy button looks like one of the skeins. The brand facts lead with the dip count because stitchers want to know why one blue differs from the next, and the rinse comes into the product description because bleeding onto white linen is the first worry with any hand dyed thread.
Questions
- Is this Shopify theme really free?
- Yes. You download a complete Shopify 2.0 theme ZIP and no account is needed. In your Shopify admin go to Online Store, then Themes, then Add theme, then Upload zip file.
- I sell each shade on its own and also as a full set. How do I set that up?
- Make the set one product and each shade its own product, or add an option called Shade with a value for each colour plus Full set, each with its own price. The theme shows the picker on the product page and the price and photo change with it.
- Colours look different on every screen. Where do I warn buyers?
- Add a line to the product description, for example that hand dyed shades vary a little from batch to batch and from screen to screen. The theme shows the full description under the price, so buyers read it before they add to cart.