Z&A Style Living

Context

A new home fragrance brand selling scents and aromatic oils for the home, office and car. Being new, it had none of what usually props up a store: no reviews, no sales figures, no track record to show.

And it had to serve two audiences on the same site: the individual buying a diffuser, and the retailer buying at wholesale rates.

Approach

• Trust without fabricating anything. No invented testimonials, no “over X customers”, no decorative badges. Trust is built from what’s actually real: careful product photography, an honest description of each fragrance, and clear shipping terms right in the top bar.
• Two channels, one store. Retail customers see prices and buy directly. Wholesale customers register, wait for manual approval, and only then see B2B rates. Wholesale prices are never rendered for an unauthorised visitor.
• Calm editorial direction — large serif, cream and olive green, natural light and long shadows. In fragrance the product is invisible, so what you’re really selling is atmosphere.
• Kadence child theme rather than a theme from scratch. The judgement here ran opposite to other projects: for a store just starting out, a maintained theme with up-to-date Woo support is worth more than the purity of a bespoke one.
• Documented single source of truth for pricing in the repo, so no rate change is ever made from memory.

What I built

• Custom Kadence child theme with its own design system
• WooCommerce catalogue with pages for the flagship fragrances
• Wholesale channel with hidden pricing and approval-gated registration
• Forms on domain SMTP plus a floating WhatsApp button
• Complete legal copy ahead of launch
• Go-live: domain registration, DNS and certificate

Outcome

Live since July 2026 with both channels running. Groundwork for French and English is already in the architecture, ready for a second phase without a refactor.

A note on this work

Built at Xpandex, where I run the full cycle: design, development, performance, accessibility, technical SEO and deployment.