The Brief:
Refresh the e-commerce experience for a second store launch.

What Actually Happened:
A dual-personality digital platform that cut their dependence on paid advertising.

Fiat Lux has two stores in San Francisco — and they don’t feel like the same brand. That’s on purpose. The Mission location is punk rock and whisky. The Fillmore is pinkies up and champaign. Two distinct spaces, two distinct aesthetics, two distinct clienteles with crossover in product. The founders didn’t want to flatten that into a single generic website.

The audit started in the stores themselves — cataloging bespoke design choices, studying the client-facing experience in each location, researching the founders’ art backgrounds. The core finding: the site needed to do what the physical spaces already did — let customers self-select the experience that fits them.

We built a “choose your own adventure” entry point. Visitors pick Punk Rock or Pinkies Up, find the artists suited to their taste, and can cross over anytime. The site bridges digital and in-person by promoting piercing, welding, and personal shopping services alongside product. Fresh email marketing assets extended the same bespoke feel across every channel.

The platform runs on Shopify with a single POS across all transactions — streamlining operations while looking nothing like a template. The result: an e-commerce experience distinctive enough to compete with stores spending far more on paid advertising.

Photo credit: Autumm Swisher Photography, @autumnswisherphotography