Mulan shop Studio

The challenge

The brand was running on a browser-only prototype — a single HTML file that loaded React over a CDN and compiled JSX at runtime. It worked for pitching the look, but it couldn't ship: no server rendering, no SEO, no tests, and a "tweaks panel" wired through an iframe postMessage protocol that only worked inside the prototype host.

The approach

We rebuilt it as a real Next.js application on an atomic-design component tree, with Tailwind v4 tokens standing in for the loose inline styles. Every Next.js 16 breaking change that mattered — async params, useSearchParams needing Suspense, hash routing — got handled during the migration, not patched around it.

Six rendering bugs came out of a side-by-side comparison against the original design file — missing font fallbacks, a wrong lang attribute, a dropped antialiased class. The kind of thing that's invisible until you put the two side by side.

Commerce

Shopify runs the backend; Next.js Server Components call the Storefront API directly for products, cart, and checkout — no separate API server. Getting the Partners-store auth flow working took real troubleshooting: Partners-created stores don't expose Storefront tokens through the normal Admin UI path, and the CLI is the only route that manages it correctly.

Result

A production build with 15 static pages and a passing test suite, on a design system that carries the brand's ink-wash, CJK-inspired identity through every page — not just the hero.