Slay Bae Shopify Rental Build

Slay Bae was launching into a category already owned by established names, with no trading history behind it. Customers are being asked to hire a £200 dress from a brand they've never heard of, so the storefront had to earn that trust on the first visit rather than build it over time.

There was a structural problem too. Rental doesn't behave like retail. Customers decide by what fits and what the occasion is, not by brand or newest arrival. A standard ecommerce build would have buried the two things that actually drive the decision.

And with a small team running it, whatever got built had to be theirs. No coming back to an agency to add a brand, publish an ambassador or launch a collection.

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We started with browsing structure rather than design. Size first, occasion second, brand third — the order customers genuinely make the decision in.

From there the theme was built from scratch around Slay Bae's brand instead of adapted from a template. Every section is bespoke and configurable from the theme editor, so new pages get built without touching code.

Okendo was chosen deliberately over stitching separate apps together. Reviews, loyalty, quizzes and post-purchase surveys running off one customer profile means the data compounds rather than sitting in four places.

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