The Plaid Place
A complete redesign of Nova Scotia’s tartan store on Shopify, built to carry thousands of products, take made-to-measure kilt orders and be found in search
The Plaid Place is a locally owned store for kilts, Highland wear, tartan and Celtic gifts, now in Sunnyside Mall in Bedford after many years in downtown Halifax. It also offers custom fittings and kilt rentals for weddings and events. We redesigned its online store from the ground up on Shopify, loaded thousands of products with details from its suppliers, and built it to be found for the searches its customers make.
Products
3,100+
With more than 5,400 variants and 3,700 product images
Suppliers
20+
Coordinated for accurate product details, from tartan mills to jewellers
Tartans on a single kilt
461
Chosen by the customer, along with pleating, flashes and measurements
Google search
Page 1
More often for searches like “tartan fabric”
The situation
A deep catalogue, and some products that can’t be sold with a simple Add to Cart button.
The Plaid Place carries thousands of items, from clan crest cuff links and Celtic jewellery to lambswool blankets, Highland jackets and tartan fabric in several weights. Much of it comes from specialist suppliers, and every item needs accurate details and images to sell online.
Some products are more involved still. A made-to-measure kilt depends on the fabric and tartan, how it’s pleated and the customer’s own measurements, and all of it has to be captured correctly before the kilt goes into production.
The old online store ran on BigCommerce. The job was a complete redesign on Shopify: a store that could carry the full catalogue, take custom orders and be found by people searching for tartan.
What we did
A new store on Shopify, a catalogue built with the suppliers, custom product options, video, search optimization, and training so the team can run it.
A complete redesign on Shopify
We designed and built a new store on Shopify, organized the way customers shop — Highland wear, men’s, women’s, living, fabric and gifts — with video at the top of the homepage and a clear path to book custom fittings and kilt rentals.
Thousands of products, with details from the suppliers
We loaded more than 3,100 products — over 5,400 variants and 3,700 images — and organized them into collections. To get the details right, we coordinated with more than 20 suppliers, from tartan mills to jewellers and knife makers, for accurate descriptions, specifications and images.
The heavyweight tartan collection alone holds 625 tartans, alongside medium weight, lightweight, tweed and polyviscose fabrics and fabric samples.
Made-to-measure kilts, ordered online
Kilts are the most complex products in the store. They come in several styles and fabrics — from a casual 5-yard kilt to a full 10-yard kilt in heavyweight tartan, and a tweed kilt — and each one combines variants with the customer’s own inputs. On a full kilt, customers choose matching flashes and whether the pleats follow the sett or the stripe, pick their tartan from a list of 461, and enter their waist, seat, kilt length and height.
Everything the kilt maker needs arrives with the order, so a made-to-measure kilt can be ordered online from start to finish.
Video built in
We built video into the store, starting with a full-width video that opens the homepage, so the first thing visitors see is Highland scenery and knitwear rather than a static banner. The video is hosted in Shopify itself and plays right in the page.
SEO from the start
We built search optimization into the new store: collections structured around how people search for tartan, complete product details on every page, and redirects from the old store’s web addresses to their new homes, so links and rankings built up over the years carried over.
The Plaid Place now appears on the first page of Google more often for searches like “tartan fabric” — the kind of search that brings in customers who already know what they want.
Training and support
A catalogue this size is never finished. We trained the Plaid Place team to run the store themselves — adding products, updating prices and stock, and managing orders — and supported them after launch.
- plaidplace.comShopify store — Highland wear, tartan fabric, clothing, jewellery and gifts, with kilt rentals and fittings
Specialty retail, online
Specialty stores are hard to put online: deep catalogues, supplier data, and products that need the customer’s input before they can be made. The Plaid Place’s new store handles all of it — from a clan crest pin to a made-to-measure kilt — and the team runs it themselves.
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