The Reset
Custom Theme DevelopmentPerformance Optimization2021
The Reset is a direct-to-consumer fashion brand founded by Maria Peevey in 2017, offering "Elevated Essentials Edited For Effortlessness," a curated collection of timeless wardrobe staples for modern women. As the brand evolved from a content platform into a full fashion label, their existing theme became a bottleneck: page speeds were poor on mobile, the filtering and purchasing UX didn't meet the standards their US customer base expected, and the design team had no room to evolve the storefront without developer support. I assessed the technical debt and determined a from-scratch rebuild was the only path to the performance targets they needed. I architected a custom Shopify theme from the ground up, engineering high performance across every device and browser, with meticulous attention to American UX conventions for filters, purchasing flows, product detail pages, and interactive layout patterns.
Rather than modifying an existing template, the entire theme was architected from the ground up using Shopify's theme architecture. Every section and block was purpose-built to align with The Reset's design specifications: a clean, fashion-forward aesthetic that prioritized whitespace, editorial typography, and imagery-first product storytelling. The custom Liquid templates were engineered for precise content management through theme settings and metafields, allowing the merchandising team to manage collections, lookbooks, and editorial content without developer involvement.
The storefront was designed to match the expectations and browsing patterns of a US-based DTC fashion audience. Collection filters were built as a multi-faceted system supporting size, color, price range, and category, all implemented with Shopify's AJAX API for instant filtering without page reloads. The product detail pages were meticulously crafted for conversion: size selectors, color swatches, a sticky buy bar on scroll, and a full-bleed gallery with pinch-to-zoom. Layout interactions followed a deliberate motion language: scroll-triggered reveals, hover-state product card previews, and micro-animations on cart additions, all built on CSS animations and vanilla JavaScript for the lightest possible footprint.
UX Features
AJAX Collection Filters
Conversion-Optimized PDP
Sticky Buy Bar
Scroll-triggered Animations
Performance was an architectural constraint from day one. By building from scratch, every line of code was deliberate, with no bloated frameworks and no inherited technical debt. Images were served through Shopify's image CDN with responsive srcset attributes for each breakpoint. Critical CSS was inlined, non-essential stylesheets deferred, and JavaScript split into async modules loaded on demand. The result: Google PageSpeed scores of 80+ on mobile and 97 on desktop, a rare benchmark for a fully custom Shopify theme with rich imagery and interactive elements.
- Mobile Speed Google PageSpeed Insights: Mobile 80+
- Desktop Speed Google PageSpeed Insights: Desktop 97
- Architecture Complete custom theme, zero template code From Scratch