zsty.us

Before / After · Case Study

Hive₂O — two storefronts folded into one site with the alcohol rules built in

  • Restaurants

David's beverage brand ran two separate online stores — one for the 6% honey mead, one for the zero-proof line — each with its own monthly bill and no real way to handle alcohol shipping rules. Both brands now live on one site he owns outright: same cinematic look, age check and state-by-state shipping rules built in, zero platform fees.

“Same cinematic brand, zero platform tax — and the compliance split between 6% ABV and 0.0% is finally first-class.”
Legacy (Hard Honey)↗Legacy (Zero-Proof)↗New build↗Repo↗
🔒https://hive2o.vercel.app
jackiej.events — modern site

At a glance

What this rebuild covers.

  • Security

    The 21+ age check and the state shipping rules are enforced on the server, not just the screen — a blocked state can't check out even if someone tampers with the page.

  • Design

    Both storefronts were cloned pixel-for-pixel, so the cinematic hero videos and product photography survived the move intact — a faithful rebuild, not a redesign.

  • Theme & color

    Each web address keeps its own personality — the warm, moody honey-mead brand on one side, the clean zero-proof look on the other — served automatically based on which site the visitor typed.

  • Selling & payments

    Real card checkout with every order saved to the brand's own database, including a timestamp proving the buyer confirmed their age on the alcohol side.

  • Agents

    A search-and-distribution agent is wired in to feed the next growth phase now that both brands live under one roof.

Receipts — measured

Numbers that moved.

2
Shopify stores collapsed into one codebase
was 2
0
Assets ripped + archived (videos, product images, pages)
was 0
0
States on the alcohol DTC ship allowlist
was 0
2
Monthly platform subscriptions
was 2
  • 2 stores → 1 site
  • 320 brand assets rescued
  • 37 states cleared to ship the 6% line
  • 2 monthly platform bills → 0

The pixel diff

Overview, then the walkthrough.

Left: everything the legacy site shipped — frozen in place. Right: an auto-scrolling tour of the rebuild, from hero to booking. No slider to fight with.

Before — the overview
🔒https://hardhoney.com
Before — the overview

This is everything the legacy site had to offer above the fold. No pricing, no calendar, no booking — the funnel ended at a mailto.

After — scroll through what shipped
🔒https://hive2o.vercel.app
After — scroll through what shipped

Auto-scrolls through the modern site so you can see the booking surface, the package grid, the pricing table, and the calendar inline — without leaving this page.

The four beats

Problem · Insight · Build · Outcome.

Scroll past the legacy frame. The four beats land in order. At the end, the modern site fades into the same window.

🔒https://hardhoney.com
Legacy
01 · Problem

Problem

Two Shopify stores for one brand family, double fees, and a hard compliance split — 6% ABV honey mead with state-by-state DTC rules next to a zero-proof line that ships anywhere.

02 · Insight

Insight

The split is routing, not infrastructure: one codebase, host-aware middleware, and compliance modeled as data — an allowlist the cart and the checkout API both enforce.

03 · Build

Build

Full Shopify rip (every page's HTML, all media, both catalogs) → faithful clones of both storefronts, age gate on the alcohol host only, orders persisting to Neon with attestation timestamps.

04 · Outcome

Outcome

Both brands live from one repo with the cinematic hero videos intact, zero platform fees, and an SEO/distribution agent feeding the next growth phase.

🔒https://hive2o.vercel.app
Modern
For the technically curiousHow it was done
  1. 01

    Where it started

    Two disconnected Shopify stores for one brand family — hardhoney.com for the 6% ABV fermented honey mead and hive20.com for the zero-proof line and waters. Each carried its own monthly subscription plus a widget stack (Judge.me reviews, Smile.io rewards, GoAffPro affiliate), the theming was locked down, and every brand asset lived on Shopify's CDN.

  2. 02

    The real problem

    The hard part wasn't the stores — it was the compliance split. The 6% ABV mead carries state-by-state direct-to-consumer shipping rules; the zero-proof line ships anywhere. Two platforms couldn't express that split. The insight: it's routing, not infrastructure — one codebase where the host a visitor arrives on decides the brand, the catalog, and the compliance posture.

  3. 03

    The rebuild

    Every page's HTML, all media, and both catalogs were ripped from Shopify before the clone began — 320 assets archived, including 6 hero videos, 71 product images, and 60 pages. Both storefronts were then rebuilt pixel-faithfully as one application on our hosting platform, with host-aware routing serving each domain its own palette, navigation, and catalog, and all media now repo-owned with no leftover dependency on the old platform's CDN.

  4. 04

    Compliance as data

    The 21+ age gate mounts only on the alcohol host, and the shipping rules are a 37-state allowlist stored as data that both the cart interface and the checkout API consult — a disallowed state fails on the server even if the client is tampered with. Orders persist to a managed database with the age-attestation timestamp recorded on each one.

  5. 05

    What runs now

    Both brands live from one codebase with zero platform subscriptions. Card checkout is the primary payment rail with full order persistence, customers get one-click sign-in and transactional accounts, and a visual page editor lets the owner change pages without a developer or a deploy. An alcohol tax-compliance foundation is staged for the mead line, and a search-and-distribution agent feeds the next growth phase.

Architecture

Old stack
  • Shopify (hardhoney)
  • Shopify (hive20)
  • Widget apps
  • Shopify CDN
↓
New stack
  • modern web framework
  • managed Postgres
  • Repo-owned media
  • edge hosting we operate

What changed, with evidence

Design

One repo, two brands — the split is middleware, not infrastructure

hardhoney.com (6% ABV mead) and hive20.com (zero-proof) render from the same Next.js 16 codebase. Host-aware middleware picks the brand: its own palette, nav, catalog, and compliance posture per domain. The cinematic hero videos and product photography were ripped from both Shopify stores and are repo-owned — no Shopify CDN dependency left.

Before
Two Shopify stores, two themes, two bills, one brand family.
After
One codebase, host-routed branding, zero platform fees.
Retention

Alcohol compliance modeled as data, enforced on both sides

The 21+ age gate mounts only on the alcohol host, and the DTC ship allowlist is a state-level data table the cart UI and the checkout API both consult — a disallowed state can't check out even if the client is tampered with. Orders persist to Neon with attestation timestamps.

  • 37-state DTC allowlist checked client + server side
  • Age-gate attestation timestamp stored on the order
  • Zero-proof host ships free of restrictions — same codebase, different posture
Design

Stripe-primary checkout + Puck page editor + transactional accounts

The latest wave made the platform operator-editable and payment-real: Stripe as the primary checkout rail, Google one-click auth, transactional customer accounts, and a Puck visual editor so page changes don't require a deploy. A Sovos foundation is staged for alcohol tax compliance.

  • Stripe-primary checkout with order persistence to Neon
  • Puck editor for page-level content changes
  • Sovos tax-compliance foundation staged for the alcohol line
Agent backbone

A 320-asset rip that preserved the brand pixel-faithfully

Every page's HTML, all media, and both catalogs were pulled from Shopify before the clone began — 6 hero videos, 71 product images, 60 pages archived. The rebuild is a faithful clone, not a redesign: David's cinematic brand survives intact, minus the platform tax.

Before
Brand assets lived on Shopify's CDN, exportable only piecemeal.
After
320 assets archived and self-hosted; the clone is pixel-faithful.

← All rebuilds

Hive₂O — two storefronts folded into one site with the alcohol rules built in — zsty.us