SALT

What does luxury skincare look like when it strips out the noise — the urgency banners, the influencer marketing, the seven-step regimens?

An elemental approach. Six essentials drawn from marine science, presented like an apothecary, not a beauty counter. The reference points were Aesop and Augustinus Bader — science taken seriously, sold quietly. The brand was invented from blank: name, palette, type, voice, product line, price points, photography strategy. Then the entire storefront was built by hand on Shopify.

The build started from Shopify's Skeleton minimal base — empty Liquid scaffolding, no theme-store template. Sixteen custom sections were written by hand: header, cart drawer, footer, four product-page sections, eight homepage sections, a collection page, a search page, and a custom SEO snippet.

The signature constraint: no photography. Every product bottle is drawn in CSS — cap, neck, body with a gradient tint, label with the SALT wordmark and product name. One decision, made early, gave the store its singular visual identity and removed the dependency on a photo shoot a real brand at this stage couldn't afford.

The commerce is real, not staged. A working AJAX cart drawer using Shopify's native cart endpoints — no third-party app. Real product import, real native Shopify Checkout, verified end-to-end with test order #1001 at $264. A newsletter form capturing real subscribers. Structured data, Open Graph and Twitter tags via a custom snippet. The only thing that's concept is the brand identity.