Temple of the Sun Website Build.
When founder Darren Gallant approached us, Temple of the Sun’s online store was working against the brand it represented. The previous build looked like a Shopify theme but behaved like a custom site; every font change required a developer, video wouldn’t load cleanly, and the team had spent 18 months trying to patch performance issues that only seemed to compound.
“It’s our shop front. It’s the most important thing to a business. At the time, our online business was probably close to 80% of our sales.”
— Darren, Founder, Temple of the Sun
For a brand carrying close to 80% of its revenue through one channel, that wasn’t something to live with. They needed a rebuild, not just a redesign, and an agency that could move with their team rather than around it.
A storefront that fought the brand
The brief was clear because the frustration was specific. The old site:
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- Looked like the Shopify theme originally chosen, but had been recoded so deeply that even typography changes required a developer
- Was slow, and got slower with each attempt to fix it
- Couldn’t reliably handle video — central to a brand whose story is built on handcraft, materials, and process
Gave the team almost no creative control through the Shopify customiser
Temple of the Sun has a wide catalogue — silver, gold vermeil, 9, 14, 18 and 24 karat fine gold, and ceremonial pieces beyond that. They needed a storefront that could hold all of it calmly, without overwhelming the customer or burying the depth of the work. After going to tender with four or five agencies, they chose The Thoughtful Agency, and Thoughtful delivered a full website rebuild with design and development over a 5 month timeline.
Brand-first, led by UX
Thoughtful’s Lead Designer anchored the design system around the in-store feeling the Temple team described from day one — calm, generous, museum-like. The Paddington store offers customers tea on arrival. Discovery, not pressure, is the sales model, and the new site needed to do the same job at scale.
“Temple of the Sun’s content is so beautiful and engaging, so we kept the design system and site layout quite minimal and stripped back — one font, minimal variations, modern and effortless. They wanted museum-like simplicity.”
— Shelley, Lead Designer, The Thoughtful Agency
That restraint shaped every template. We split the collection and product templates by category; Demi-Fine, Campaigns, Ceremonial Jewellery, Gift Shop, and a Bespoke Archive, so customers could navigate a broad catalogue without it feeling busy. Ceremonial pieces over $5,000 were given an Enquire flow instead of an Add to Cart. Shipping timelines were made dynamic at the variant level – customers see “ships in 1–3 days” or “made to order” without anyone in the team updating copy by hand.
On the development side, Phil and the team built on the Prestige theme as a boilerplate and extended it heavily: animated mega navigation, linked variants, complementary products, back-in-stock notifications, an enquiry drawer for high-end and bespoke pieces, an appointment booking drawer, 28 custom page templates, simplified blog templates, and a custom filter and sort drawer. A concurrent Shopify POS migration brought in-store retail onto the same platform, and the US site received the same theme with content migrated across. The project ran through staff changes on both sides without breaking stride.
“Someone stepped straight into the breach. Thoughtful’s team knew exactly what the deliverables were in advance. It was a little bump in the road, but between us we were able to transcend it.”
— Darren, Founder, Temple of the Sun
A custom charm builder, built into the theme
Temple of the Sun has offered bespoke fine jewellery since 2022. Until the rebuild, the easiest way into that world was a conversation. Darren wanted a structured, on-brand entry point; a guided way for customers to taste the bespoke experience before committing to a full custom piece.
“The birthstone charm necklace was a way of leading people into that possibility, but in a structured way, so they get used to the idea that they can engage with Temple and have a say in creating something unique to them.”
— Darren, Founder, Temple of the Sun
We reviewed the off-the-shelf charm builder apps on the Shopify marketplace, but none of them held the brand.
“They were very off-brand and clunky. A lot of jiggling, a lot of different effects. It just wasn’t quite right. So we built something custom into the theme.”
— Phil, Lead Developer, The Thoughtful Agency
The result lets a customer choose between one and five birthstones and set their position on the chain with selections rendering in real time. When the order goes through, the underlying charm products are added automatically so the production team receives a clear build sheet with no manual interpretation and no risk of mis-builds. Templates are client-controlled: the Temple team can spin up new charm builders across product lines and constrain the selections as required, without coming back to us.
Temple of the Sun launched ahead of Black Friday 2025, then carried the brand through the seasonal sales period, Mother’s Day, and the charm builder release. Comparing the first five months post-launch against the five months immediately prior:
- Average order value up 32%
- Reached checkout up 81%; completed checkout up 81%
- Sessions up 43%
- Total sales up 100%
Comparing the first five months post-launch against the same five months of the the previous year:
- Average order value up 25%
- Reached checkout up 31%; completed checkout up 7%
- Sessions up 13%
- Total sales up 33%
Beyond the numbers, the team now has a site that works with them. They change what they want, when they want, video carries the craft it was always meant to carry, and the brand that lives in the Paddington store; calm, considered, generous, now lives online too.
“We’ve got a nice, solid, clear, elegant, calm base from which to build out. That’s what we wanted.”
— Darren, Founder, Temple of the Sun
Thinking about a Shopify rebuild?
If your storefront is fighting your brand – slow, rigid, dependent on developers for every small change – we’d like to talk. We build Shopify sites that hold up to growth, give your team creative control, and look like the brand they represent.
