Selling a restricted category means the platform choice is a compliance decision, so the front end and the checkout came from two different products on purpose.
21+
Age gate
enforced before the storefront loads
2
Platforms, one store
Webflow front end, Shopify checkout
Affiliate
Programme integrated
plus Klaviyo lifecycle email
The problem
THCA flower, concentrates and edibles sit in a regulated, restricted category. Payment processors, ad platforms and ecommerce platforms all have opinions about it, and those opinions change.
On top of that, the brand competes on presentation. It is an award-winning product sold with dark, cinematic art direction, so the storefront needs real design freedom rather than whatever a template allows.
What we did
The site is built in Webflow, which gives the design freedom and lets the client's team edit pages directly. Commerce runs through Shopify underneath, so cart, checkout, orders and customer accounts sit on infrastructure built for it rather than on a website builder's bolted-on store.
That split is the whole point. Presentation and compliance have different requirements, and giving each to the tool that handles it best is more robust than forcing one platform to do both.
An age gate runs before the storefront is reachable, which the category requires. Klaviyo handles lifecycle email and the on-site capture, and an affiliate programme is integrated for the referral channel that categories like this lean on when paid advertising is restricted.
The outcome
The brand gets a storefront that looks nothing like a template, on a checkout built for selling, with the compliance requirements of the category handled at the front door.
Frontend
Commerce
Growth
What we learned
In a restricted category the platform choice is a compliance decision first and a design decision second.
Splitting the front end from the checkout is a legitimate architecture, not a compromise, when the two have genuinely different requirements.
Thirty minutes with the engineer who would lead the project. You will leave with an opinion on what to build, what to skip, and roughly what it costs, whether or not you hire us.
2 build slots open · Next start: early next month
What happens next