We do not just build Shopify stores for other people. We operate one. Pet Buckets is our own DTC brand: hand-picked dog and cat toys, curated hard against the disposable stuff that fills the category. Every merchandising call, every collection, every email, every ad. Ours. Own brand. Nothing outsourced.
Build me a store like this →no retainer trap. just truth.
An agency selling Shopify builds should be able to point at a store it lives with. So we built one and kept the receipts.
Plenty of agencies build stores. Far fewer have felt a restock decision, a return, or ad spend that comes out of their own pocket. Advice from someone who has never carried the risk is theory. We wanted the risk.
The category is full of toys that look great in a photo and last about eleven minutes with a real dog. Cheap product, cheap listings, cheap stores. Buyers have been burned enough times to assume every new brand is the same.
Most pet stores organise by product type. Owners do not think that way. They think about the animal in front of them: the one that destroys everything, the one that gets bored, the one that only wants the ball. Navigation had to match the owner, not the warehouse.
An unknown DTC brand is asking a stranger for card details. Shipping cost, returns, and who answers when something goes wrong are not footer details. They are the objection, and they need answering before the buyer thinks to ask.
The store is organised the way an owner actually shops. Power chewers. Puzzles and slow feeders. Fetch favourites. Wand and chaser toys. No-stuffing plush. A buyer with a destructive dog lands on a page that says so in their own words. Category pages that answer a problem convert. Category pages that list a product type do not.
Objections get answered before checkout, not inside it. A 60-day happiness promise, free shipping over the threshold, and a founder address that reaches a human. Customer photos under the brand hashtag do the work that stock imagery cannot. Proof beats adjectives.
Not a deck. Not a strategy doc. The store you can open right now.
Full storefront build on Shopify. Mobile-first, fast paths to cart, product pages written to sell rather than to describe.
The collection architecture is the strategy. Dogs and cats split at the top, then sorted by what the animal actually does.
The parts that turn a first order into a second one. Policy, proof, and a reason to come back next week.
Buying guides and care content written for owners searching before they buy. The blog is a acquisition channel, not decoration.
Decide what the brand refuses to sell. Curation rules written down before a single product is listed.
Products selected against durability and enrichment, not margin alone. If it fails with a real animal, it does not list.
Shopify build, behaviour-led collections, product pages, mobile pass, analytics from day one.
Guarantee, shipping threshold, support address, and customer proof wired into the templates.
We run it. New arrivals weekly, content on a cadence, creative tested with our own money.
Every one of these is something we run daily, not something we read a tutorial about.
Different industry. Different problem. Same practitioner approach.
Yes. It is our own brand, on our own Shopify account, funded and operated by us. That is the entire point of including it in the portfolio. When we tell a client how a DTC store behaves, we are describing something we live with, not something we read about. Practitioners, not theorists.
No, and you should be suspicious of agencies that splash their own P&L across a marketing site. What we will do on a call is walk you through the build itself: the collection logic, the product page structure, the trust layer, the ad account setup, and what we learned the expensive way. The method transfers. Someone else's revenue screenshot does not.
Because owning the outcome changes the advice. Running Pet Buckets means we have argued with shipping costs, watched a creative fail, and rewritten a collection page that was not converting. Every one of those lessons ends up in client work. It is also the honest answer to the oldest question in this industry, which is whether the agency can do it for themselves.
Yes, that is service file №04. Store build, collection architecture, product page system, trust layer, content, and the paid and email layers if you want them. Scope depends on catalogue size and how much of the operating you want to keep in-house. We will tell you honestly which parts you do not need yet.
For clients that is a choice, not a requirement. Some hand the keys back and operate it themselves, which we actively support by documenting the system. Others keep us on for content, creative, and merchandising. No retainer trap. Just honesty.
We will look at your catalogue, your collection structure, and the objections your product pages are leaving unanswered. Then we tell you (honestly) what is worth building. Before you commit to anything.
no retainer trap. just truth.
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