Upside Drinks · Shopify development
Two warehouses. One straightforward shopping experience.
Helping a growing drinks retailer connect what customers can buy with the warehouse serving their region.
Visit Upside Drinks (opens in a new tab)The client
Upside Drinks, a non-alcoholic drinks retailer serving customers across Canada and the US.
My role
Shopify development and solution architecture — from the customer’s location choice to custom inventory services and a connected browsing and cart experience.
The challenge
Stock in the wrong warehouse is the wrong stock to sell.
Upside Drinks was expanding from one eastern warehouse to an East/West network. The goal was simple: customers should be able to order products that could ship from the warehouse serving their part of the country.
The storefront needed to catch up with that ambition. Its standard Shopify stock information combined inventory across locations. A product could look available because it was in stock elsewhere, even when the warehouse serving that customer had none.
Shopify’s out-of-the-box storefront behaviour didn’t meet this requirement. Upside needed regional stock to shape the shopping experience before an order was placed — from finding a product to choosing a quantity and checking the cart.
The solution
Make the complexity invisible to the customer.
I built a connected regional shopping system around one simple question: where is this order going? That choice carries through the store, so customers can browse naturally without needing to understand the warehouse network behind it.
An easy starting point
Geolocation suggests a shopping region on the first visit. A clear location selector lets customers choose another destination, and the store remembers their choice. Canadian and US shopping experiences stay aligned with the appropriate website and currency.
Products for their region
Regional rules shape collections and search, while warehouse-specific stock informs product availability and purchase quantities. Customers get a store experience tailored to where they’re shipping.
A cart that keeps up
If a customer changes regions, the system checks the products already in their cart. It adjusts quantities or removes products that cannot be purchased for that destination, then clearly explains what changed.
Behind the experience
A connected system, designed to be extended.
A custom inventory API connects Shopify’s warehouse-level stock to the storefront. This gives the store actual quantities for each location, rather than asking product tags alone to stand in for changing stock levels.
A central controller coordinates product availability, with location selection, inventory access and cart updates kept in separate, focused modules. Each part has a clear responsibility, so future changes can build on shared rules instead of recreating them throughout the theme.
Performance and reliability are built into that structure: recent stock responses are reused to avoid unnecessary requests, duplicate lookups are combined, and outdated responses are prevented from overriding a customer’s latest selection.
Customer location
One choice shared across the store
Warehouse inventory
Stock for the relevant region
Shopping experience
Connected browsing, products and cart
The outcome
A storefront built around regional fulfilment.
Upside gained a custom storefront system designed for its warehouse expansion: a simple location choice for customers, regional control over product discovery and purchasing, and a shared technical foundation that connects the experience.
The value goes beyond a location selector. It brings the customer-facing store closer to how the business actually operates, with the structure to support its next stage of growth.
Does your Shopify store need to work differently?
Whether you’re growing a retail business or delivering a project for an agency client, I can help turn complex requirements into a shopping experience that makes sense.
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