Quvira by Riya

Where It Started

Riya didn't come to me with a blank brief — she'd already tried building Quvira herself first. It's a natural instinct when you know exactly what you want: just do it yourself. But between running the actual product side of the business — sourcing carved teak pieces, working with artisans — and trying to get a Shopify store to look the way she pictured it, the site wasn't turning out how she wanted. That's when she brought it to me.

Turning Her Vision Into a Real Design

She already knew what she wanted — she just hadn't been able to get a store builder to produce it. So I took what she'd been working with and rebuilt the whole thing properly in Figma: the carved-teak product photography given room to breathe, the Hindi names paired with their English translations — "बाग़ | Bagh," "दरवाज़ा | Darwaza" — a quieter, more editorial feel than a typical Shopify store. I didn't move to development until the Figma file actually matched what was in her head, not just something in the same direction.

Built as a Custom Theme, on a Tight Deadline

Once the design was locked, I built it as a genuinely custom Shopify theme rather than skinning an existing one, matching the Figma file section by section — the atelier grid, the product story blocks, the collection pages. The timeline was tight and there wasn't much room to push it back, so it was heads-down until it shipped.

The Result

quvirabyriya.com is live now, and it's the store Riya actually wanted the first time around. She was genuinely happy with how it came out — which mattered more here than usual, since she'd already tried and struggled to get there on her own.