Custom e-commerce websites for UK specialist retailers, artisan makers and owner-operated brands. Own your payments, own your customer emails, keep every penny. No marketplace commission, no monthly platform fees.
Etsy charges 6.5% per sale. Plus 4% + 20p on payment processing. Plus listing fees. Plus mandatory offsite ads at 12-15% once you cross their threshold. All in, a good chunk of every sale walks straight out the door.
The bigger problem: you never own the customer. Customer emails belong to Etsy. Follow-ups fire through Etsy's template. Repeat orders happen on Etsy. You built the audience. You paid for the ads that grew the audience. You just don't own the audience.
Custom-built e-commerce for specialist retailers. Every feature is there so you keep more of what you sell and own more of the customers who buy.
Every sale lands in your bank account minus only Stripe's 1.4% + 20p. No marketplace commission, no listing fees, no mandatory ads. Just your revenue.
Order confirmation, dispatch update, follow-up, review request. All sent from your brand, not a marketplace template. Every email opens the door to a repeat sale.
Every customer, every order, every email address, sitting in your admin. Export whenever you want. Run marketing, seasonal campaigns, VIP programmes. Impossible on Etsy.
Smart "customers who bought this also bought" logic that lifts basket size at checkout. Not aggressive, just accurate. Little nudges that quietly raise the numbers month on month.
Ranks on Google for what you sell. Named when someone asks ChatGPT or Perplexity for a maker or specialty retailer in your niche. Built in from day one, not bolted on later.
Products, prices, stock, orders, emails, discount codes, cross-sells, reviews. All controlled from one dashboard. No developer needed once we hand over.
The Dice Tavern make laser-cut MDF terrain for Warhammer 40K. They took off on Etsy but the fees were killing them and they couldn't reach customers after the order. We built them a custom platform: direct Stripe payments, 4-stage automated email sequence, cross-sell engine at checkout, and a full admin so they run everything themselves. Every penny stays with them now. Sat at 4.9 stars on reviews.
Etsy takes 6.5% per sale plus 4% + 20p payment processing plus listing fees on every product. If you turn over more than about £10k a year they also opt you into offsite ads which can add up to 15% on top. Every marketplace has similar economics. On your own platform, that money stays with you. Own site pays back the build within months for anyone doing consistent sales.
UK specialist retailers, indie makers, and owner-operated brands: laser-cut and craft businesses, artisan food, specialty homeware, hobby goods, kits, custom apparel, subscription boxes, direct-to-consumer brands. If you sell your own products online, we build the platform for it.
You never had SEO on Etsy. Etsy ranks. You didn't. On your own site we build in local and specialty search from day one, so Google search + AI chats like ChatGPT and Perplexity name your brand when someone searches for what you sell.
Direct Stripe integration means every payment lands in your bank account minus only Stripe's 1.4% + 20p. Every customer email is yours, so you can send order confirmations, dispatch updates, follow-ups and review requests in your brand voice, not a marketplace's template.
Yes. Most specialist retailers we work with keep a small marketplace presence for discovery and push all repeat customers to their own site. We can integrate the stock and orders so you're not managing two inventories.
Custom e-commerce builds start around £3,500 for a focused platform. Fixed quote per project, no per-transaction fees on top. Rough budget at the end of a free 30-minute call.
Book a free 30-minute call. We'll work out what a custom e-commerce build would look like for your brand, and how quickly the fees you save would pay it back.
Book a free call