The making of Cross-Border Luxury Retail on Shopify Plus

Minimalist sells luxury watches and jewellery from the UAE worldwide. We built their Shopify Plus store — multi-currency, BNPL and gift wrapping. See how.

Client: Minimalist
Built with: Shopify Plus, Liquid, Prestige Theme, Judge.me, Klaviyo

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Cross-Border Luxury Retail on Shopify Plus — the delivered interface

Challenges

A luxury purchase is won with reassurance rather than urgency — authenticity, the 24-month warranty and aftercare had to be legible at the point of decision without resorting to the discount-and-countdown patterns that cheapen a premium brand
One storefront spanning watches, jewellery, handbags, leather goods, perfumes and sunglasses, sold to both men and women — the navigation has to work by named collection and by product category at the same time, because customers arrive expecting both
Selling from the UAE to the world — AED pricing with live currency conversion, two separate shipping regimes, and the regional buy-now-pay-later options Gulf shoppers expect on a high-ticket basket
Speaking to a bilingual market without running two stores — Arabic sits in the campaign and collection artwork rather than behind a locale switch, which keeps one catalogue to merchandise but means the Arabic is invisible to search

Solution

Minimalist is a UAE luxury brand a decade into trading, handcrafting in the Emirates and selling watches, jewellery, handbags, leather goods, perfumes and sunglasses online and through its own stores. The storefront runs on Shopify Plus with the Prestige theme forked and rebuilt around a collection-led catalogue: named families like Heritage, Classic, Element, Joory and Um Alyazia sit alongside a conventional men's and women's split, so a customer can arrive by collection or by category and land in the same place. Around that sits the machinery a cross-border luxury seller needs — AED pricing with live currency conversion, separate UAE and international shipping rules, the buy-now-pay-later options Gulf shoppers expect, bilingual campaign creative for Emirati occasions, personalisation and gift packaging, and the warranty and aftercare that justify a considered purchase.

Services provided

Design

Restraint is the brand, so the interface gets out of the way: a monochrome scheme of near-black on white with grey rules, and no accent colour competing with the metal and stone in the product photography. Jost handles every level of the type hierarchy, sized rather than recoloured to establish rank. Buttons are fully pill-shaped at a 30px radius and set in uppercase, which is the one place the design raises its voice — and because it is the only emphatic element on the page, it is unambiguously where to click.

Colors

#1C1C1C
#262626
#D9D9D9
#FFFFFF

Typeface

Headings and body
Jost
A geometric sans in the Futura lineage, carrying both headings and body. Its even circular forms hold up at the large sizes a luxury storefront uses, and stay quiet enough underneath product photography.

What we built

Collection-Led Catalogue

Named product families — Heritage, Classic, Element, Joory, Um Alyazia, Charming Diamond, Fyne — running across men's and women's, with a Best Sellers module that toggles between the two rather than splitting into separate pages.

Seven Categories Under One Roof

Watches, jewellery, leather goods, handbags, gift sets, perfumes and sunglasses share a storefront, with colour-variant swatches on the product cards so a shopper compares finishes before opening anything.

Personalisation and Gifting

Complimentary handbag customisation, gift sets, gift boxes and premium gift packaging — what turns a luxury accessory into an occasion purchase rather than a considered one.

Bilingual Campaign Creative

Collection and campaign banners carry Arabic headlines set in the artwork alongside the English wordmark, so a national moment like Emirati Women's Day reads as native — without the storefront itself being duplicated into a second locale.

Cross-Border Trade From the UAE

AED as the base currency with live conversion for international visitors, separate UAE and international shipping rules, and Tabby and Tamara buy-now-pay-later — table stakes on a high-ticket Gulf basket, not a nice-to-have.

Rewards, Reviews and Aftercare

A rewards programme, Judge.me carrying the review volume the trust strip advertises, a 24-month warranty, free shipping over 500 AED, a care-and-maintenance guide and a store locator.