Deviant Distillery
A small distillery doing things their own way — and selling the results online.
The brief
Deviant make small-batch spirits in Australia — whisky, rum, gin, the occasional limited release — and the site had to feel like the bottle in your hand, not a templated Shopify store.
Brand voice was the constraint that drove most of the decisions: where Shopify gives you nine boxes and a photo slot, Deviant needed room for the products to breathe. Big imagery, considered type, the kind of pacing that doesn't shout at you.
The build
- 01A frontend that lets the product breatheGenerous space, considered type, none of the generic Shopify chrome.
- 02Age-gating that isn't annoyingCompliant with Australian requirements without getting in the way of the buying experience.
- 03Stock and orders in the team's workflowWired up to how the team already operates, not the other way round.
- 04A checkout that doesn't lose peopleTuned at the final step — the bit most small e-commerce sites quietly leak revenue from.
The details
Big e-commerce stores integrate with Australia Post or DHL APIs to calculate shipping in real time, but small-batch spirits don't dispatch on a regular schedule — sometimes the same week, sometimes when there's enough stock to fill a pallet. So shipping options are admin-defined per dispatch window: name, description, price. Simpler, more accurate, and no API rate limits to worry about.
A single bottle has multiple variants (700mL, 200mL) at different price points, each with its own stock count and dispatch implications. The product model treats variants as first-class — stock is decremented from the right variant on order via Stripe webhook, the cart shows the variant choice, and receipts call it out by name.
Australian alcohol-online rules require an age check, but most implementations are an over-the-top modal that fires on every page load. Here the check happens once, in middleware, and the result is cached in a cookie — so visitors clear the gate on first arrival and don't see it again.
Spirits get re-bottled and re-priced. If today's invoice references "Whisky 700mL @ $X" and next year that variant is "$Y", the invoice from a year ago needs to still mean something. Every order captures a snapshot of the product name, variant, and price at the moment of purchase — so historical orders stay accurate even when the catalogue changes.
"pixel61 built a bespoke ecommerce site from the ground up for my business. Their service was professional, efficient, and reliable and the end result was truly fantastic. I would definitely recommend to anyone looking for a quality and user-friendly business site, and will definitely use pixel61 again next time I need to build a website."
Questions you might have
The stuff small-business buyers actually email me about. Answered up front so you don't have to.
01Do I own the site?
Yes, completely. The code is yours, the design is yours, the domain is yours. If you ever want to take it elsewhere, just ask — I'll hand over everything you need to move it. No lock-in, no hostage situation.
02I'm not technical at all. Is that a problem?
Not even slightly. Most of my clients aren't technical. I'll never make you "log into the cPanel" or send you a JSON file. If something needs to happen, I'll either do it for you or write you a one-page guide with screenshots.
03How does payment work?
50% deposit to start, 50% on launch. UK bank transfer. Invoice has clear terms, payment is due within 14 days. For the Care Plan it's monthly direct debit / standing order, cancel anytime.
04Is the price plus VAT?
No. pixel61 ltd isn't VAT-registered, so what you see is what you pay. (If that ever changes, the pricing here will be updated and the FAQ will say so.)
05Will my site show up on Google?
Yes. I do the proper basics on every site — page titles, descriptions, sitemap, structured data, fast load times. That gets you found when someone searches for your business name or "[your-thing] in [your-town]", which is what most small-business customers are actually doing. What I don't do is promise you'll rank #1 for "web designer" or "best plumber" against people who've spent years and tens of thousands on SEO. Anyone who promises that is selling you something else.
06Can you fix / redesign my existing site instead of starting fresh?
Honestly? Usually no. Most of the time it's quicker, cheaper and better for both of us to start fresh on a small site than wrestle with someone else's old code. If you really want me to look at an existing site, I will — but I'll tell you straight if a rebuild is the better call.
Want to chat about a site?
Festival, band, café, distillery, holiday let, anything. Fill in the boxes and hit send — none of it is required, the more you tell me the more useful my reply will be. Comes straight to my inbox, no team, no triage.
Prefer a quick chat first? Book a 30-minute call
Or skip the form and email me directly: hello@pixel61.com
If it helps, here's what to include
None of it is required, but the more you tell me up front, the more useful my reply will be:
- 01Roughly what you're building.A holiday let? A café? A festival? Something else?
- 02Any sites you like the look of?(yours or anyone else's) — saves a thousand words.
- 03What's driving the timingLaunching something? Old site embarrassing you? Festival in October?
- 04A rough budgetIf you've got one. The packages page should tell you what mine cost — if those numbers feel about right, just say "Standard tier-ish" and we're sorted.
I'll come back with either "yes, let's do it, here's how" or "no, here's why, here's who I'd point you at instead". Both are useful — neither will take a week to land in your inbox.