Alepu: a custom Shopify store for essential oils
Alepu sells essential oils and diffusers that need no electricity. We designed and built a custom Shopify theme that tells the story behind the oils, helps shoppers pick the right one with a short quiz, and stays easy for the client to edit themselves.
- Client
- Alepu
- Industry
- E-commerce, essential oils and diffusers
- Year
- 2026
- What we did
The brief
Alepu had a Shopify store and products worth telling a story about: essential oils, and diffusers in wood and marble that work without power. The store needed to look like the brand, explain why the oils are different and help people choose. The client also wanted to keep editing pages themselves, without a developer.
What we built
- A custom theme on Shopify’s own foundation. We built the theme on Dawn, Shopify’s reference theme, so checkout, payments and apps stay standard and the client edits every section in the Theme Editor.
- A ritual finder. A short quiz asks about the room and the mood, then recommends oils and a diffuser, with a “Get 10% off” prompt next to it.
- Story pages. A mega menu, three mission pages and an Expedition page that shows the distillers, with films that load only when someone presses play so the page stays fast.
- Real photography. We swapped every stock placeholder for the client’s own shoot, resized for the web so photos stay sharp without slowing pages down.
- Catalog and launch. Products went in through Shopify’s Admin API rather than by hand. We published shipping and returns policies, set the store to US-only and turned on a welcome offer for first orders.
Where it stands
The store is live at alepu.com and the client runs it day to day. We’ll add numbers here once there’s a full quarter of sales to compare.
Related reading: Website development · Shopify CRO