[SYSTEMS LAYER] Custom Shopify App Development

Custom Commerce Systems

Eleven systems that didn't exist before we built them.

The systems layer is what the other five layers exist to support — the bespoke commerce mechanics that do not exist in any app store and cannot be hacked together from a theme. Each of the eleven systems was born inside a real engagement, refined for the next, and now ships as standing inventory. Open the library and the eleven are documented, named, and on the shelf.

LAYER06/06of the system we build
SURFACES06capabilities in this layer
STACK06technologies on the bench
SOLD ASSYSTEMnever as a single service
N°01The layer

What ships in this layer.

6 surfaces, all built as part of the same system. None of them ship alone — they are the parts that make this layer work inside the whole.

  1. 01SAMPLE & ATTRIBUTION

    Sample System · credit attribution

    $4.99 sample tracked through to the eventual purchase. Credit applied at checkout. Sample-to-purchase rates of 18–34% on high-AOV products.

  2. 02CART MATHEMATICS

    Sq Ft Calculator · FTL Simulator

    Area calculations with pattern-aware waste factors and min-buy enforcement. Live freight bracket update as the cart crosses LTL-to-FTL thresholds.

  3. 03SLAB & INVENTORY

    Slab Gallery · Quarry Sync

    Every slab listed as a unique variant with its own photos and a 36-hour customer hold. Inventory synced from Excel, ERP, or sheet sources without manual data entry.

  4. 04TRADE & QUOTE

    Trade Portal · Project Rooms · Quote-to-Cart

    Gated B2B with net pricing and memo samples. Multi-room project organisation. Quote-to-Cart flow that brings $15K+ transactions back into Shopify.

  5. 05PRODUCTION & POST

    Production Tracker · 8–14 week visibility

    Quarry · fabrication · QC · container · shipping · customs · door. Every stage triggers an email and adds a workshop photo. CS inquiries drop 60–70% for custom orders.

  6. 06PROVENANCE & DEPTH

    Heritage Map · Pattern Visualizer

    Interactive supply-chain map linking every product to its origin. Canvas-rendered pattern preview to scale, with PDF export for contractor handoff.

Why this layer is part of the build.

tone, wood, tile, and slab commerce does not behave like the templates Shopify was built for. A customer needs the actual slab they will receive, not a stock photo. Freight cost should drop as the pallet fills, not appear as a surprise at checkout. A custom production order needs visibility over fourteen weeks, not a single dispatch email. We build the systems layer because no app on the market models these problems — and because once a brand has the right mechanic, the rest of the funnel stops working against it.

WHAT WE ARE NOT

We do not take this layer as a retrofit on a storefront we did not build. If that is the work, the right call is an agency. We build the system the layer lives inside.

N°03Technical bench

How this layer is actually built.

The stack is on the bench, the wiring is documented, and the instance shipped with your system is yours to extend after handover.

ON THE BENCH
  • 01Sample
  • 02Sq Ft
  • 03FTL
  • 04Slab Gallery
  • 05Trade Portal
  • 06Production Tracker
6 layers · all yours after handover

Each system is purpose-built against the operational reality of one engagement, then generalised for the next. Some live as Hydrogen islands on the storefront layer, some as custom Shopify app development on the embedded app surface in Remix + TypeScript, some as n8n workflows in the operations layer, some as Flow exports inside Shopify. The library at /systems documents each one — its flow, its compound, its technical surface — so the brand owning it knows exactly what was shipped and how to extend it after handover.

systems shipping
11
off-the-shelf parts
0
library, every engagement
one
N°04Where it lives in the system

Inside the system you would ship.

The layer does not stand alone. These are the standing systems most often built on top of it and the adjacent layers it interlocks with.

SYSTEMS BUILT ON THIS LAYER

N°01

Sample System

18–34%sample-to-purchase rate

Sample-to-purchase flow with credit attribution. $4.99 sample → tracked → conversion attributed.

N°02

Sq Ft Calculator

zerounder-orders shipped

Cart-aware area calculator for products sold by the box. Pattern, waste factor, min-buy logic.

N°03

FTL Simulator

livefreight rate in cart

Real-time truck-fill estimation as customers shop. Fill % and freight bracket update live.

ADJACENT LAYERS · INTERLOCK

N°02Operations AutomationWhere the work actually breaks — between systems.
N°01Headless StorefrontBuilt on Hydrogen, not on a theme.

[N°05] Common questions

The questions this layer answers.

How the custom commerce systems layer behaves in production — the trade-offs we have already taken and the ones we re-open per build.

  1. What counts as a custom system?

    A surface that does not exist as a Shopify app, or that does exist but does not hold the way your brand needs it to. Sample-with-postage, FTL-grade freight, slab-as-product, quote-to-cart for trade, production photo threads — these are not theme features.

  2. Can a custom system attach to a storefront you did not build?

    Yes — as long as the data layer is reachable. We bolt the surface onto the existing storefront through the Storefront API or a custom proxy we control.

  3. Do you sell these as standalone apps?

    No. Every custom system is built against the specific data shape of the brand it runs for. Generalizing them into apps would erase what makes them work.

  4. How do you decide what to build custom versus what to install?

    If a tested app holds, we install it. If holding the shape of your catalogue requires bending the app to a place it was not designed for, we build the surface from zero.

N°06Next step

You want this layer? You want the whole system.

We do not take this layer as a one-off. We build from zero and grow with the brand. Every engagement begins with a paid discovery — fit before contract.

N°AOPEN A BRIEF

Build the whole system

Paid discovery sets the shape. We map your case across all six layers and ship the system the systems layer lives inside.

N°BREAD THE PRACTICE

How the work runs

Six chapters on how the system gets built — origin, journey, discipline, outcomes, handover. The story behind the layers.