Qawqab
Ancient symbols, worn now — a drop-based storefront for a New York apparel label.
- Year
- 2026
- Region
- United States
- Platforms
- Web
- Stack
- Shopify · Liquid · Custom theme
Where things stood.
Qawqab is a New York apparel label built on one idea: every print is a symbol that outlived the civilisation that drew it. Chapter I is five heavyweight tees — a camel, a falcon, a horse, a guardian, a bloodline — redrawn and printed in New York.
The brand releases in chapters rather than seasons. That made the storefront a story first and a catalogue second, and it had to be ready to be re-dressed entirely when Chapter II lands in the spring.
What we were asked to solve.
A five-product catalogue cannot hide behind merchandising. With that few pieces, the storefront itself has to do the persuading — the symbol behind each print, the weight of the cotton, the cut — all before a thirty-five-dollar decision.
Stock Shopify themes are built for deep catalogues and constant restocking. Qawqab needed the opposite: a drop that reads as finite and complete, on a structure that can carry the next chapter without a rebuild.
How we built it.
We built a custom theme on Shopify, taking Horizon as the foundation and rebuilding every surface above it. Inventory, checkout, payments, shipping and tax stay managed platform behaviour; everything the customer looks at is ours.
The homepage is sequenced like an editorial: the drop, the five pieces, the story behind the prints, then the fit. Product pages lead with the symbol and its provenance rather than a spec list.
Chapter structure lives in Shopify collections and theme sections. Chapter II is a content operation — new collection, new hero, same theme — not an engineering project.
What shipped.
Custom theme, managed commerce
Every customer-facing surface is custom-built; checkout, payments, fulfilment and tax stay on Shopify’s managed rails.
Chapter-based merchandising
Collections and theme sections are structured around drops, so launching a chapter is a content change rather than a rebuild.
Editorial product pages
Each tee leads with the symbol it carries and why it survived — the fit and the fabric follow, they don’t open.
Launch logistics, surfaced
Free US shipping over $105, 30-day returns, and printed-in-New-York provenance appear where they remove hesitation, not buried in a policy page.
Waitlist for the next chapter
Subscribers see Chapter II first. Email capture is written into the story, not bolted onto the footer.
What shipping looked like.
- Five-piece launch, live
- Chapter I
- Theme built, not installed
- Custom
- Chapter II ships as content
- Drop-ready
- Checkout, tax and fulfilment
- Managed
What's under the hood.
- Platform
- Shopify
- Storefront
- Custom Liquid theme on the Horizon foundation
- Merchandising
- Collections structured per chapter
- Checkout
- Shopify Payments with US shipping rules
- Chapter waitlist capture
Arabvesta
Community, experts, and offers for Arabs building a life in the U.S.
Have an RFP? Have an idea? Let's build it.
We reply to every inquiry within one business day. Tell us about your project, timeline, and what success looks like.