Custom Shopify Theme for Pango Productions

“Do we need to arm our latest penguin with a hot water bottle to keep him warm in the winter?”

This is one of the ways Cindy Pang first described the personality of her company, a greeting card publisher called Pango Productions. Just from this simple image, we knew we were in for something special.

Cindy creates the kind of vibrant, adorable greeting cards that you’d never want to toss because they’re bursting with life and originality. She and her friend David sell these creations on their website, wholesale to other shops and boutiques, and also license their innovative characters. Now about 12 years old, Pango was ready for a completely new website that addressed 3 specific goals:

1. Drive wholesale transactions through the website: “we would like the site to become the focal point for this and effectively become the sales agent,” Cindy said. She envisioned an intuitive, easy-to-use online platform that would entice retailers to buy with beautiful imagery and minimum fuss. Equally important, she needed something that’d be just as simple for them to operate on the backend.
2. Create new opportunities: “We would also like the site to be a true window to our products and the design to reflect the fun nature of Pango so it can also become a portal for licensing and design opportunities outside our current product categories.” In other words, a site that would showcase all that is great about Pango.
3. Grow as they grow: Since Pango planned to expand their offerings from greeting cards to new product categories, it was paramount that their new site adapt and grow with these changes.

Now, these were very specific goals—which we love—that called for some very specific execution. With Shopify providing a solid e-commerce foundation, Cindy needed us to create a custom Shopify theme for Pango rather than use a pre-made design. While Shopify’s basic functionality and pre-made themes are easy for businesses that are just starting out, we realized that Pango had reached a point in their growth where their needs (and hence, the solutions) were unique to their brand and products.

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As we brainstormed various ways to showcase Pango’s originality and help set them up for success, our team kept coming back to that parrot! Okay, that, and their most powerful selling point: their cards are innovative, fresh, and no two lines are ever the same. The designs and characters are cute and somewhat mischievous, and they are never what you’d expect.

Natalia worked on bringing the voice of Pango to life through copy and narrative on their About page. It told a wonderful story about the brand’s origins and their growth into a happy, London-based studio where imaginations run amok and the Pango crew makes tea and dances when they fancy it.

Next, Shoshanna stepped in to work on the site’s new design. Inspired by the About page, Cindy and David proposed creating graphics to go with the narrative on the About page and animating them. They discussed providing storyboards so the animation could be like a little movie. Shoshanna thought this approach was inspired, but she proposed simplifying it. By scaling down from full-out animations to simple scrolling effects that display on larger screens, Pango’s fun characters would still convey the personality of the brand, without overwhelming the page content.

View the animation on the Pango site – so cute!

The result was an animation-like effect that fills the web experience with movement and life — even little touches around the site, like on thumbnail rollovers, added a little special something while not distracting from the overall shopping experience. New photography and a simple layout with plenty of white space make each card pop with its own unique design elements, and new licensing and wholesale pages give a welcoming, easy-to-navigate nod to new partners.

Could your online shop use a custom makeover full of carefully tailored-to-you solutions? Contact us about a custom Shopify theme and let’s explore the possibilities!