The Custom Captain
DigitalSuits supports The Custom Captain with ongoing Shopify development, A/B testing, and UX improvements across a complex ecommerce setup.
Personalized Shopify boating apparel store update and rolling out new features
Location:
USA
Cooperation model:
Industry:
Partnership period:
April 2024 – now
Improvements plan:
Discovery phase, requirements and estimation analysis, Shopify maintenance and support
Team size:
Project manager, Team lead, Shopify developer, QA
Technologies:
Shopify, HTML, CSS, Liquid, JavaScript
About the client
The Custom Captain came from the founders' own experience on the water. As lifelong boaters, Connor and Nick saw how frustrating it was to order custom gear that looked right, felt practical, and held up in real marine conditions. They built the brand to remove that gap. Their goal was to make custom boating apparel easier to order and better suited to life on the water, whether for someone who goes out on weekends or for people who spend much more time on board.
About the product
The Custom Captain sells custom boating products designed around personalized boat artwork. Its range includes clothing, drinkware, and accessories. Because production is handled in-house, the brand can work with a wide mix of product types and artwork formats, including custom boat logos. Beyond its own storefront, the brand also supports partner sales through dedicated pages and white-label production.
Where did the client need a helping hand with upgrades for their Shopify boating apparel store?
The Custom Captain planned strategic changes rather than a single fix. The brand was growing, testing new ideas, launching partner-driven experiences, and refining how customers interacted with custom products across the site. That created a steady flow of design, UX, and functionality challenges that went far beyond routine maintenance.
One of the key needs for the Shopify boating apparel store update was constant interface improvement. Parts like the contact and about us pages, the collection and landing pages, the mega menu, the footer, and the PDP – all required redesign work. But for the client, the Shopify redesign was never about changing visuals for the sake of it. Every update had to prove its value to real users.
Another major challenge sat at the heart of the buying journey – artwork logic on the product page. Since The Custom Captain's products depend on personalization, the ordering flow had to handle different product types, artwork placements, and customer choices without making the experience complicated or unclear.
This was especially important because the configuration could vary from product to product. For example:
Some items allowed front and back customization
Others included additional placement options, such as sleeves
Some products required a simpler setup with fewer artwork choices.
The challenge was to keep that experience adaptable without losing clarity. Customers needed enough freedom to personalize the product, but the process still had to be easy to follow.
Supporting a more complex ecommerce ecosystem
Beyond the product page itself, Shopify's optimization of the boating products store also involved a range of technical and operational tasks. The brand decided to migrate image storage from Cloudinary to Shopify, so we updated the storage logic and made sure the storefront experience stayed uninterrupted.
At the same time, the team had to fix issues that hampered the client experience and modify minor elements that were still important in practice.
These improvements included:
Updates to image handling and display
Fixes tied to artwork and product logic
Adding the option to choose a background color for boat artwork instead of limiting every image to white
Simultaneously, the business was expanding through partner pages and microsites. These experiences lived under separate domains and carried partner branding. However, they still relied on the same site structure and core logic behind the scenes. Each new page had to feel adjusted to the partner while remaining consistent with the wider ecommerce system.
Because of this, the task covered far more than one online store. The Custom Captain needed support for a larger ecommerce setup with custom product logic, frequent design updates, technical changes, and partner pages under separate brands.
To keep that momentum without slowing internal teams down, The Custom Captain needed a dependable Shopify partner. DigitalSuits supported the brand through its Shopify retainer service, providing continuous development, optimization, and strategic guidance.
What DigitalSuits brought to the project
DigitalSuitshelped The Custom Captain to improve both the storefront experience and the logic behind it.
A major part of our work centred on A/B testing, which became one of the key ways to validate design decisions. We did not push every update live right away. First, we tested it against the current version and analyzed the results.
Our Shopify developers backed The Custom Captain across several directions at once:
Redesigned the Contact Us page and other important storefront sections
Built collection pages and landing pages for partners
Created and maintained partner microsites under separate domains
Enhanced product page logic for artwork selection and personalization based on Shopify product page best practices.
Migrated parts of the setup from Cloudinary to Shopify
Added new functionality, including background colour selection for artwork
Fixed bugs and adjusted logic around product behaviour, including issues related to sold-out states and artwork limitations.
We also worked on broader storefront improvements, including updates to the mega menu, footer, PDPs, filters, and other customer-facing elements. Because many of these changes were A/B tested before launch, the client could make decisions based on user response. Beyond implementation, we also acted as a long-term support partner.
How did the cooperation continue?
Since the collaboration runs on a retainer basis, the client regularly brings new ideas, design concepts, and feature requests to our team. In some cases, that means building new solutions; in others, reviewing existing functionality through Shopify consulting services and advising on the best approach.
Such a cooperation model gave The Custom Captain confidence in this partnership and room to improve the store step by step.
Business outcomes
By the end of 2025, The Custom Captain’s Shopify store demonstrated strong growth across key business metrics, reflecting steady and consistent progress throughout the year, with sessions reaching 1.25 million (a 6% increase), alongside notable increases in both total sales and the number of orders.
These numbers show that the brand continued to attract customers, convert demand into orders, and grow revenue.
If your store is evolving in similar ways, it may be the right time to contact us.
Frequently asked questions
Was the work limited to design updates?
No, the project went far beyond visual improvements. We also provided support for the Shopify boating products store. While storefront sections were redesigned, a large part of the work involved technical changes behind the scenes, including image storage migration, product logic updates, new functionality for artwork background color selection, and ongoing fixes that supported the buying experience.
What made this cooperation model effective for the client?
The Shopify retainer setup gave The Custom Captain a steady development partner they could rely on as new ideas, feature requests, and design updates came up. That made it easier to improve the store step by step without slowing down the internal team or treating every new task as a separate project.
Who is this kind of Shopify support best suited for?
This type of support works best for brands that are evolving continuously, especially when they need more than routine maintenance. If a store manages custom product logic, tests new ideas, or expands into partner experiences, such support can be much more effective than occasional one-off fixes.