Your orders deserve more than a DM thread.
You sell through Instagram, WhatsApp, and word of mouth, and every order means messages back and forth, a payment to chase, a note in a spreadsheet. In five minutes, you'll know whether a store of your own would pay for itself.
The signs you've outgrown DM orders:
- Orders arrive as DMs, and each one takes a conversation to close.
- Payment is a bank transfer you have to watch for, then match to the right order.
- The same questions arrive every day: what's available, what it costs, do you deliver.
- Your best products are buried in the grid, and the price list lives in your head.
- Stock and orders live in a notebook or spreadsheet only you understand.
- A marketplace or platform takes a cut of every sale, forever.
If three or more of these apply, you're doing checkout's job by hand. The good news: this is fixable.
The grid earns the interest. Checkout closes the order.
People find independent shops on Instagram and buy where buying is easy. When ordering means DMing, waiting, transferring, and trusting, some never start and others drop out halfway. The shops that grow are the ones where the buying is as good as the product.
- closed by hand is time not spent making, sourcing, or selling. A DM thread is a checkout only you can operate.
- Every order
- in your bio decides what happens after someone loves your work. A grid can't take payment. A store can.
- One link
- Marketplaces and selling platforms take their cut of every order for as long as you sell. A store you own doesn't.
- Forever fees
Three things cap a DM-run shop. Every sale needs your personal attention, so busy weeks hit a ceiling set by your thumbs. Payment friction loses buyers you never even hear from. And nothing you post accumulates: your best work scrolls away, and every question gets answered one buyer at a time. Posting more doesn't lift any of the three.
The ceiling isn't demand. It's that every order needs you in the room.
- Orders negotiated one DM at a time.
- Bank transfers matched to orders from memory.
- Prices and availability answered over and over.
- Best products buried under newest posts.
- A platform's cut on every sale.
- The algorithm decides who sees the shop.
- A store that takes orders while you work.
- Stripe checkout: paid, confirmed, and recorded in one step.
- Products, prices, and delivery answered on the page.
- A catalogue organised by product, not posting date.
- Card fees only. No platform cut.
- Found on Google by people who never saw the grid.
What a shop's own store should be doing.
Sells while you work
Your full catalogue with prices, photos, and delivery details on the page, so an order happens without a conversation. The DM becomes the place people say thank you, not the place they queue.
Checkout without the chase
Stripe checkout on your own domain: paid, confirmed, and recorded in one step, with every order and payment matched automatically in one dashboard. No more scanning the bank app for a transfer that matches a username.
A shop you run yourself
Add a product, change a price, mark something sold out, feature this week's best work. The editor is shaped around what shop owners change, with short walkthrough videos covering every action.
Found beyond the grid
Product pages with structured data, built to rank for what you sell and where you sell it. Buyers who never saw your Instagram can still find you, and the store works for them too.
Flowerbox254
Florist · Launching now
Flowerbox254 sells arrangements through Instagram, and every order used to be a conversation: what's available, how much, how to pay. We designed and built her first store, with the full catalogue, prices, and delivery answered on the page, and Stripe checkout so an order is paid, confirmed, and recorded in one step.
She runs it herself: products, prices, availability, and photos, all through the same editor we build for every client, no developer in the loop. Orders and payments reconcile automatically in one dashboard, so the notebook retires. And because it's her own store on her own domain, no marketplace takes a cut of anything.
- Ordered, paid, confirmed
- One step
- Products and prices she updates herself
- Self-serve
- Card fees only, no platform fee
- No cut
If your orders still close in the DMs, five minutes tells you what a store would change. Send us your Instagram and we'll reply honestly, including if we think you don't need one yet. No charge, no obligation.
How to judge anyone offering to build your store.
- A platform that takes a percentage of every sale on top of card fees.
- A template that looks like every other shop, with your logo dropped in.
- A store you can't update without a developer or a support ticket.
- Checkout that redirects to someone else's brand at the moment of payment.
- You don't own the domain, the code, or your customer list.
- No thought given to how buyers find the shop outside Instagram.
- Card fees only. No platform percentage, ever.
- Custom design around your products, not a theme.
- An editor you can use between customers: add, price, sold out, done.
- Stripe checkout on your own domain, in your own name.
- You own the code, content, domain, and customer list on day one.
- Product pages built to rank for what you sell.
How your project will go.
Nothing moves forward without your sign-off. Fixed scope, no lock-in, and the store is yours.
- 01
Free discovery call
We learn the shape of your shop: what you sell, how orders arrive today, how delivery works. No charge, no obligation.
- 02
Onboarding & planning
We map your catalogue, your prices, and how checkout and delivery should work. You see the plan before anything gets built.
- 03
Design
Full page designs you sign off before we touch any code.
- 04
Build
Store, editor, Stripe checkout, and SEO, built and tested.
- 05
Testing & launch
Cross-device testing, a full test order end to end, then live on your domain.
- 06
Ongoing care
Hosting, monitoring, SEO, and small changes handled, so the store doesn't drift.
Three ways to work with us.
Your catalogue, prices, and delivery details in a store you manage yourself. Orders arranged however you take them today.
- Custom design and build
- Catalogue with prices and delivery details
- Editor for products, prices, photos
- Mobile and desktop optimised
The full shop: browse, order, and pay in one place, with every order recorded automatically.
- Everything in Storefront
- Stripe checkout with automatic reconciliation
- Order dashboard: who ordered what, who paid
- Delivery options and order confirmation emails
For shops actively growing beyond the grid, with product SEO and seasonal landing pages doing the reaching.
- Everything in Storefront + Checkout
- Product SEO and structured data
- Landing pages for bestsellers and seasons
- A customer list you own, ready for email
- Built for your shop, not a themeCustom design and code around your products and how you deliver, with product SEO included rather than sold back to you as an extra.
- You own everythingCode, content, domain, and customer list. Card fees only, no platform taking a cut of your sales. Cancel any care plan, the store stays yours.
Pick how much of the day-to-day you want us to handle after launch. Swappable at any time.
We hand you the editor and the keys. You update products and prices yourself. We keep hosting, security, and the store itself running quietly in the background.
- Hosting and uptime monitoring
- Security patches and updates
- Email support, 2 business day response
You drive the shop; we keep the engine running. Monthly check-in, SEO review, small changes handled by us.
- Everything in You manage it
- 5 developer hours per month
- Monthly SEO and performance report
- Priority support, 1 business day response
You get back to making and selling. We update the store, run SEO, and send a monthly performance report.
- Everything in Managed with our support
- Product and content updates handled end to end
- Active SEO work, not just monitoring
- Quarterly strategy review
What you're choosing between, side by side.
| Instagram / marketplace only | Shopify template | Freelance dev | SMF Studio | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Up-front cost | None | Low | Medium | Medium |
| Cost per sale | Platform cut, or your time | Monthly fee plus app fees | Card fees | Card fees only |
| Checkout | DMs and transfers | Theme checkout | Sometimes | Stripe, on your domain |
| Update it yourself | Posts only | Yes, inside their system | Hand-rolled or none | Yes, your editor |
| Found on Google | Rarely | Sometimes | Sometimes | Built to rank |
| You own the code | No | No (lock-in) | Usually | Yes |
| Time-to-launch | Now | Self-serve | Variable | 3-8 weeks |
| Who builds it | You | You | One freelancer | The three of us |
Deliberately not knocked: a marketplace's reach. If one brings you buyers, keep it. The store is where the repeat ones become yours.
Meet Saajan, Madu and Finn.
Three founders, one team. The same people who scope your store also design it, build it, and pick up the phone when something needs deciding.
Saajan Patel
Founder, product and deliveryRuns your project from kickoff to launch day. Always knows where everything stands, warns you before a date moves, and is the one you'll speak to when something needs deciding.
Say hello
Madu Gadzama
Founder, design and strategyDecides how the site looks, reads and converts. Expect a lot of questions about your customers on the discovery call: the design and the words grow out of the answers.
Say hello
Finn Formica
Founder, engineering and SEOCares about the parts nobody sees: clean code, pages that load before you notice, markup a search engine reads perfectly. That's also what gets the work found, so he runs our SEO and GEO.
Say hello
The things people ask us before getting in touch.
Keep Instagram, it's where people find you. The store is where the sale finishes without you: prices answered, payment taken, order recorded, while you're making or sleeping. Repeat customers skip the DM entirely, and you stop being the checkout.
Stripe checkout on your own domain. Customers pay by card through a checkout with your name on it, you see who paid for what in one dashboard, and every payment matches its order automatically. We handle the Stripe wiring; the merchant relationship and the money are yours.
However it works for you today: delivery zones, flat rates, collection, or a mix. Options and fees show at checkout, so the where-do-you-deliver conversation stops arriving in your DMs.
Yes. Mark things sold out in a tap, feature what's fresh, set up seasonal ranges. The editor is built around what shop owners change, daily, between customers.
If you can post a product to Instagram, you can add one to your store. Short walkthrough videos cover every action, and we're on the end of an email when you're stuck.
Three to eight weeks depending on scope. Expect about an hour of your time a week, mostly looking at what we've made and telling us what's right. We work around your busiest days.
You do, once the project is paid in full. Code, content, domain, and your customer list. We keep the right to show the work in our portfolio, nothing more.
Most shops move onto a care plan so the store stays maintained, monitored, and ranking. You're never left to figure out hosting on your own.
The shop owners we talk to aren't short of customers. The work sells itself in the DMs, and that's exactly the problem: every sale needs them personally. A store doesn't replace the grid, it finishes what the grid starts, and it works the hours you don't. If that sounds like your week, send us your Instagram and we'll tell you honestly whether a store would pay for itself.
Finn FormicaFounder, engineering and SEOSend us your Instagram or a question.
Fill in the form and we'll reply within one working day with something useful, either way. No charge, no obligation.