Work / 01 — Padel
Creative direction · Brand · Shopify build

Sacarla.

A great bag, stuck behind a template. Now a brand and a store that sells it.

Client
Sacarla, founders Fraser Gibson & Loz Mitchell
Role
Brand, design & Shopify build
Year
2026
sacarla.co.uk
The new Sacarla pre-order page, full scroll

Live capture · hover to pan the page ↓

01 The brief

One bag, a £90 price tag and no brand book.

Sacarla makes a commuter backpack with a racket compartment that clips on and off, for people who go from the 9 to 5 straight to a 6pm court. The founders, Fraser and Loz, had the product, a photoshoot and a half-built Shopify store that wasn’t turning visitors into buyers. Stock was six weeks away and they wanted pre-orders live first.

02 Before & after

From a template
to a brand.

This was the store as the founders first built it themselves. Drag the handle to compare it with the page that replaced it. Both are captures of the real sites, the old one taken just before the switch.

The new Sacarla pre-order page The old Sacarla store, a stock Shopify theme
↔
Before After

Drag to compare · their own build vs the new store

03 The plan

Pre-orders first.
The full store behind it.

I pitched three design directions and they picked “Studio”. Whichever they chose, the plan was the same: take money from day one, build the real store quietly behind it, then switch it on when the bags land. No locked “coming soon” page.

Week 1
Pre-order cover live
A working checkout from the first week.
Weeks 1–3
Full store built behind it
On an unpublished theme, reviewed privately.
Before stock
Test and connect
Test orders, and ready for stockist WX Padel.
Stock day
One switch
“Pre-order” becomes “Buy now”.
sacarla.co.uk
The new Sacarla page on desktop, full scroll
mobile
The new Sacarla page on a phone, full scroll

The new page on desktop and on a phone · hover to pan

What happened: the pre-order page went live on 9 October, eight days after the proposal. The full store is built, tested and waiting for stock day.

04 The brand

An identity built from the product up.

With no brand book, the bag itself set the rules: matte black, a single rubber badge and a court-green ball. I built a palette around that. Lime is the loud one, used for the ball and the buy button, and the rest stays quiet so the product leads.

I paired three free fonts into a simple type system, tightened the headline voice, and used the logo they chose as a clean transparent cut-out so it sits straight on the page. Everything was written up as a one-page brand sheet their team uses for social media.

The Sacarla logo, black letters with a white outline
Their chosen logo · cleaned up as a transparent cut-out
Lime
#DDF24A
Black
#111211
Off-white
#FBFBF9
Light grey
#EFEFEA
Mid grey
#B7BAB2
Matte black bag · tennis-ball lime
Archivo
Extrabold
Hanken Grotesk for body text.
Geist Mono · small labels
Narrow caps headlines · all free Google Fonts
The Sacarla brand sheet: logo, tagline, colours and fonts

The brand sheet I handed over for their social media

05 The words

Every word is
theirs.

Fraser and Loz wrote all of the copy themselves, from the tagline to the returns policy. I did not rewrite it. My job was to give their words the right size, weight and space to land, so the voice on the page is unmistakably theirs.

A few of their lines, set the way they appear on the site:

Detach the racket. Change the mode.The tagline · Fraser & Loz
Most padel bags are designed for the court. The Sacarla backpack was designed for everything around it too.The statement · Fraser & Loz
Sacarla. To take it out.The name · Fraser & Loz
06 What changed

What was holding it back

  • The logo sat in a black rectangle, and the type was a generic theme font.
  • A brown outline “Add to cart” button with no sense of urgency.
  • The product section appeared twice, the second time behind a “View product” button.
  • “Includes 3 branded balls” was jammed into the description.
  • Placeholder testimonials from people who did not exist, and a doubled Refund policy link.

What the new store does

  • Price, free delivery and the buy button sit above the fold, next to the photos.
  • A photo gallery you can swipe on a phone, with real studio shots of every feature.
  • A quantity picker, a live countdown to stock landing and a capped pre-order of 90 bags.
  • A proper 30-day returns page, linked from the buy box and footer.
  • The brand carries through every page, down to the favicon and share image.
Old store: photo banner and placeholder testimonials
Before · placeholder reviews
Old store: the product repeated further down the page
Before · product repeated
Old store: footer with a doubled refund policy link
Before · doubled footer links
07 The outcome
8 days
From proposal to a live, paid pre-order page
90
Bags open for pre-order, capped by real stock
2
Sites delivered: pre-order page now, full store ready for stock day
Next case · 02
Peak Fitness
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