The making of A Custom Shopify Theme for a Single-Product Skin Supplement

Sunsafe Rx is a one-product antioxidant skin supplement. We built their Shopify store on a custom theme — subscriptions, science pages, B2B routes. See how.

Client: Napa Valley Bioscience
Built with: Shopify, Liquid, Custom Theme, Appstle Subscriptions, Air Reviews, Shopify Email

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A Custom Shopify Theme for a Single-Product Skin Supplement — the delivered interface

Challenges

A one-product store has no catalogue to browse, so the whole site had to work as a funnel to a single product page — which is why the science, the founder's letter and the comparisons are built as destinations in the navigation rather than as sections buried on the product page
Subscription revenue depends on the frequency being right: too frequent and bottles pile up and the customer cancels, too infrequent and they run out and forget — so the selector had to offer six intervals and steer towards the one most customers actually choose
An oral antioxidant that supports the skin's response to sun exposure sits next to a regulatory line it must not cross, so the pages had to argue the benefit through cited research while carrying the FDA disclaimer and stating plainly that the product does not replace sunscreen

Solution

Sunsafe Rx is a daily antioxidant capsule from Napa Valley Bioscience, a research-led nutraceutical company founded in San Francisco in 2008 and now based in Santa Monica. It has been sold internationally since 2010, is recommended by dermatologists, and is built around a proprietary Antioxidine blend of more than fifteen plant antioxidants. It is also the company's only product, which shaped everything about the build. Rather than fit a one-product business into a catalogue theme, we built the store on Shopify as a custom theme written from scratch: a single product page that doubles as the homepage's destination, a Subscribe & Save flow with three bottle sizes and six delivery frequencies, and a set of long-form science pages — how it works, benefits, supplement facts, formula research, quality standards — that do the persuading a supplement bought on evidence needs. Appstle runs the subscriptions, Air Reviews carries the 135 verified reviews, and a founder's letter from David anchors the brand. Beside the consumer store sit retailer, distributor and dermatologist pages, so the professional channels the brand has built over fifteen years have a front door on the same site.

Services provided

Design

The palette is a bottle on a sunlit windowsill: white and a warm cream for the page grounds, near-black for type, and a single deep green for every button, the review stars and the subscription highlights, with a slightly lighter green for hover. Nothing competes with the amber bottle and the palm-shadow photography, which carry the sun-and-nature idea without the design having to say it. Plus Jakarta Sans is the only typeface, set in Bold for the hero and section titles and Regular for the long science copy — a modern geometric sans with open counters that stays readable through ingredient lists and study summaries. Buttons are fully pill-shaped at a 50px radius and small-caps labels in green sit above each section, so the long pages scan in a single pass.

Colors

#005C00
#2E7D32
#FFF8EE
#1A1A1A
#FFFFFF

Typeface

Headings, body and buttons
Plus Jakarta Sans
The single face across the storefront, Bold on the hero and section titles, Regular on body copy, ingredient accordions and FAQs. A contemporary geometric sans with generous x-height, chosen because most of the site is long-form reading.

What we built

A Theme Built From Scratch

No Dawn fork and no page builder — a custom Shopify theme written for one product, so every section, from the hero to the subscription selector, is designed for exactly this purchase rather than adapted from a catalogue layout.

Subscribe & Save as the Default

The product page opens on Subscribe & Save — 10% off, free shipping on every delivery for life, skip or cancel anytime — with one-time purchase as the alternative, so the recurring option is the path of least resistance.

Three Sizes, Priced Per Day

30, 60 and 120 capsules at $35, $53 and $98 on subscription, each shown with its cost per day — $1.17, $0.89, $0.82 — and a Best Value badge on the largest, so the comparison is made in the unit the customer actually thinks in.

Six Delivery Frequencies

Monthly through to every six months, with every four months marked as the most common — a frequency selector tuned to how people really take a daily capsule, which keeps subscribers from pausing because the bottles pile up.

The Science as Pages, Not Paragraphs

How It Works, Benefits, Supplement Facts, Formula Research and Quality Standards each get a dedicated page, with per-ingredient accordions on the product page — polypodium, green tea EGCG, grape seed, lycopene — linking to peer-reviewed studies.

Quality Credentials as a Repeating Strip

Manufactured in the USA, FDA-registered facility, NSF certified, third-party tested, sold internationally since 2010 — a five-badge strip that repeats on the homepage, the product page and the footer, because a supplement is bought on who made it.

Comparison Content Built In

Sunsafe Rx vs Heliocare and Antioxidine vs Fernblock as blog posts linked from the footer — meeting the shopper who is already comparing the two best-known oral sun-defence brands rather than pretending the competitor does not exist.

A Letter From the Founder

A Welcome from David page in the main navigation — a molecular biologist's first-person account of why the product exists — beside the company history, giving a science brand a human voice.

Retailer, Distributor and Dermatologist Routes

Three professional pages in the footer for the trade and clinical channels the brand sells through, plus an ambassador programme, so the B2B side of a fifteen-year-old business lives on the same storefront as the consumer sale.

Risk Reversal on Every Page

A 60-day money-back guarantee, free shipping and skip-or-cancel-anytime stated in a single line under the hero and repeated on the product page, with the FDA and sunscreen disclaimers carried honestly in the footer.