Whisker & Galena is a garage workshop in Bemidji, Minnesota, run by Dale Okonkwo, a retired broadcast engineer who spent thirty one years keeping a small AM transmitter on the air. He cuts each baseboard from northern white spruce, winds ninety turns of enamelled copper wire on a birch tube by hand, and sets a galena crystal with a fine phosphor bronze whisker, so the radio runs on nothing but the station's own signal.
Who this theme is for
A small shop that sells electronics people build or keep on a shelf: crystal radios, soldering kits, hand wound speakers, restored valve sets. Buyers want to see the parts before they read the specs, so the page opens on the finished radio on a dark table with its copper coil and brass posts in plain view, comes in close on the windings, then shows the coil being wound by hand. The Fashion Forward layout sets a large two font heading over sharp dark buttons, which gives the claim that it needs no battery room to stand on its own line.
What was decided in the brief
The style is Fashion Forward on its second variant. The primary is a dusk violet, for the hour after sunset when AM stations carry furthest, and the accent is a warm yellow taken from the brass terminal posts, so the buy button wears the colour of the part you clip the antenna to. The brand facts lead with the missing battery because that is the question every buyer asks first, and the antenna length goes into the facts because range is the second.
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 both finished radios and kits. How do I show that?
- Add a Version option to the product with values such as Finished and Kit to build, and give each its own price. The theme shows the option beside the price, and you can say in the description what tools the kit needs.
- Where do I put a parts list or a wiring diagram?
- Put the parts list in the product description, or add a collapsible row in the theme editor under the product page template. A wiring diagram can go in the product media as an extra image, so it sits in the gallery beside the photos.