Welcome to the Happy Tees® blog! Embarking on the journey to rebuild an existing Shopify store can be both exciting and daunting. The process so far has involved a lot of hard work, dedication, and creativity. But we wanted to share what the experience has been like, and attempt to be transparent along the way.
Where It All Began
Before taking over in June 2025, the Happy Tees® store was already established a few years earlier, actively selling clothing, plus other items such as stickers and buttons. At some point the storefront itself was listed for sale. That's when we stepped in to purchase the store, the name, the assets, basically everything, with our business partner to add the Happy Tees® Brand name as a trade name for a Limited Liability Company (LLC).
In terms of a makeover, we didn't even think about it at first, because most of the time spent in the beginning weeks was completing the purchase payment, transfers for domain names and various files (original domain was justhappytees.com because happytees.com was taken), and other activations to "restart" the store. It was our time to be responsible now. As new owners, we're in the driver's seat to make changes, and a fresh start to breathe new life into our online storefront.
Setting Goals and Vision
The first step in our journey was to set clear goals and a vision for the revamped store. We wanted a clean look that would resonate with our target audience. User experience was a top priority, ensuring seamless navigation and easy checkout process. We wrote out some answers to marketing questions on template documents provided for free to small businesses from SCORE, the Society of Retired Executives. Writing things down really helped to "make it make sense" as we prepared the store to go live.
Earlier the store was using their own printer for graphic t-shirts and other apparel, and a big upfront change was to select a different printing service. This meant we had to mark hundreds of product listings already in Shopify as "draft" mode, to temporarily remove the products from being shown, so we could begin adding new inventory to start working with our new printer.
Choosing the Right Theme
With so many Shopify themes to choose from, finding the perfect one was no easy task. After thorough research and consideration, we finally found a theme that aligned with our vision. And guess which one? The original theme (called Main) that was already in place. Customizing it to fit the branding for Happy Tees® was tedious (such as editing the Liquid code in a few spots), but also a fun and rewarding process.
In fact, maybe for future blog posts we can deep dive into our Liquid code edits. It's not much, but it could be interesting and helpful for others.
Optimizing for Conversions
Conversion optimization was a key focus during the rebuild. We implemented fresh inventory listings, clear call-to-action buttons, streamlined the checkout process, and optimized product pages for better visibility. The goal was to make it as easy as possible for customers to make a purchase. Business school calls this "reducing the friction" when it's simple and easy to buy. In this area, Shopify did make it easy with their payment gateway, but we also implemented additional things, such as adding apps to our Shopify store for improvements with payment fraud detection.
Strategically (as our phase 1 approach, just starting out) we made the decision to focus only on the United States consumer market. As we grow, we can eventually expand internationally to other countries, and figure out specialty areas such as taxes, shipping, and regulatory requirements such as General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe. Another big decision was to create a shipping profile in the system that removes the cost of shipping for customer orders. We're counting this as a marketing cost to encourage sales. And we felt it was important to stand up for our store and create a sense of trust with our customers by offering a money-back guarantee.
Launching the New Store
After weeks of hard work which included finally obtaining the happytees.com domain name from a broker, it was already July. We did a soft opening by removing the default Shopify store restriction on the main page, and making the store go live. Test purchases have been made to see from the customer's perspective what happens (in reality, not in theory) for the checkout process, shipping, as well as email notifications. And as a result, carefully making minor store adjustments to language in our policies, and further customization of email messages. To fully launch the store, we will embark on a marketing campaign with online paid advertising and other ideas. But it's nice to ease into it, as we make sure everything is setup properly.
Reflecting on the Journey
Looking back two months at this point on our journey to rebuild the Shopify store, we couldn't be happier with the results. The hard work and dedication paid off, and our online presence is stronger than ever. It just goes to show that with a clear vision and a lot of hard work, anything is possible! More to come . . .