Kaleido Afrique.

Luxury pan-African homeware ecommerce on custom WooCommerce — complex multi-warehouse split shipping wired into checkout.

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IkonikStudio project

The brief

A luxury ecommerce site that respects the product.

Kaleido Afrique curates pan-African homeware from independent designers across the continent. The old site sat on a templated Shopify theme that made every piece look identical — no room for editorial, no support for the multi-warehouse split shipping the business actually runs on. We rebuilt it from scratch on WooCommerce.

The challenge

Shopify themes flatten luxury inventory.

Off-the-shelf themes on Shopify or WooCommerce are built for volume, not curation. Kaleido was hitting the ceiling of what a template could do: editorial product stories were living outside the store, the checkout couldn't handle split shipping from multiple African warehouses, and every design update needed a plugin workaround.

Editorial that lives with productLong-form product stories, artisan bios and collection notes as first-class content — not blog posts stapled onto the store.
Multi-warehouse split shippingOrders split across warehouses in South Africa, Kenya and Ghana with per-item routing at checkout, not after.
Custom checkout that feels like the brandEvery checkout step designed to match the editorial identity — no default Woo screens, no Shopify Payments lock-in.
Luxury visual language across every touchpointFull art direction across category, PDP, cart, checkout and post-purchase emails — every screen intentional.

The approach

Custom WooCommerce theme. Custom checkout. Zero plugins for anything critical.

We built Kaleido as a hand-coded WooCommerce theme in PHP, with a custom checkout flow and a multi-warehouse shipping engine. No page builder, no theme framework, no plugin dependencies for the parts of the store that actually make money.

01 · Content model & taxonomiesCustom post types for artisan, collection, editorial and press. Categories and attributes shaped around real product hierarchy — not default Woo taxonomies.
02 · Custom WooCommerce theme + checkoutHand-coded PHP theme, custom cart drawer, custom multi-step checkout, custom order confirmation — every step of the funnel authored on-brand.
03 · Multi-warehouse split shippingCustom logic that routes each cart item to its origin warehouse, calculates per-warehouse shipping, and generates split fulfilment orders in the backend.

The result

A luxury ecommerce site that ships from anywhere.

Kaleido now curates freely, adds artisans and collections without dev support, and processes multi-warehouse orders without spreadsheets. Every checkout screen is on-brand, every editorial page is a first-class content type, and every product loads sub-2s on a phone.

Custom stack, end-to-end

Theme, checkout, shipping engine and content migration — one hand-authored WooCommerce build, no plugin dependencies for anything critical.

Warehouses supported

Split-shipping engine routes each cart item to its origin warehouse across South Africa, Kenya and Ghana.

Checkout plugins

Custom checkout flow, custom cart drawer, custom payment integration. No SaaS fees eating margin as you scale.

Stack & services

The right ecommerce tools for a real business.

Every choice is documented, every dependency is minimal — so Kaleido's team can hand this to any future developer without a translation guide.

PlatformWooCommerce CMSWordPress ThemeCustom PHP theme FrontendVanilla JS + CSS CheckoutCustom multi-step ShippingMulti-warehouse routing PaymentsPeach · Yoco · Stripe SearchCustom faceted filter SEOSemantic HTML + Product schema PerformanceSub-2s LCP on mobile

Common questions

What people ask us about luxury ecommerce.

How much does a custom WooCommerce build like Kaleido Afrique cost in South Africa?

Every custom WooCommerce build — editorial content, custom checkout, multi-warehouse routing — is quoted after a brief call. Integrations, warehouses and payment routes all move the number. Fixed price up-front, every scope item on the record.

Should I use Shopify or WooCommerce for a luxury brand?

Shopify is fine at low volume with default requirements. As soon as you need custom checkout, split shipping, multi-warehouse routing, editorial content models or your own payment stack — you're paying Shopify fees for things WooCommerce does natively with a custom theme. For luxury brands, WooCommerce almost always wins on flexibility and margin.

Can you migrate our existing store from Shopify or a template WooCommerce theme?

Yes — Kaleido was a Shopify → WooCommerce migration. We move product data, categories, customer accounts, order history, blog content and SEO redirects. Zero downtime on switchover, and we keep the URLs intact so SEO rankings survive.

Do you handle payment gateway integration (Peach, Yoco, Stripe, PayFast)?

Yes. We integrate every major South African and international gateway — Peach Payments, Yoco, Stripe, PayFast, Ozow, PayGate. Multi-currency, 3DS, subscription-ready. Custom implementation, so you're not stuck on the default plugin flow.

Where are you based, and do you take on ecommerce clients outside South Africa?

Based in Johannesburg, we work with ecommerce brands across South Africa, pan-African, UK and EU. Everything's remote-friendly and delivered on a shared workspace.

Kaleido Afrique.

Kaleido Afrique, trading.

A luxury ecommerce site that respects the product.

Shopify themes flatten luxury inventory.

Custom WooCommerce theme. Custom checkout. Zero plugins for anything critical.

A luxury ecommerce site that ships from anywhere.

The right ecommerce tools for a real business.

What people ask us about luxury ecommerce.

Building a luxury store? Let's do it properly.

Kaleido Afrique.

Kaleido Afrique, trading.

A luxury ecommerce site that respects the product.

Shopify themes flatten luxury inventory.

Custom WooCommerce theme. Custom checkout. Zero plugins for anything critical.

A luxury ecommerce site that ships from anywhere.

The right ecommerce tools for a real business.

What people ask us about luxury ecommerce.

Other things we've shipped lately.

Barizsta

Deacon & Associates

Building a luxury store? Let's do it properly.