A handmade gifting brand’s first real online store

A gifting business that ran on chat.

Tofha makes handmade gifts: flower bouquets, hampers, engraved glass, letters, calligraphy and bookmarks. I started it and I run it. Before the store, every order began on Instagram and usually ended on WhatsApp, one conversation at a time.

The website had to let people browse, choose and pay on their own, while leaving room for the custom pieces that only ever start with a conversation. I designed it and built it.

Every order began by answering the same questions.

Someone would see a bouquet in a post and message to ask the price. Then how long delivery would take. Then whether it could be personalised. None of it was hard to answer, but it had to be answered again for every buyer, before they had even decided to buy.

A typical order before the store: the same few questions, in a new chat every time.

Before designing a page, I went back through the chats.

Running Tofha meant the evidence was already sitting in the inbox. I read back through our Instagram and WhatsApp conversations, looked at which products and occasions sold, and asked past buyers how they had chosen.

Three ways into the same catalog, on one page.

Collection is the default, because that is how most buyers already think: they came for flowers, or a bookmark. Occasion and Recipient sit right beside it for someone who arrives knowing only “it’s her birthday.” Switching swaps the filter row and the grid in place, so nobody has to back out to a menu to change their mind.

Each switch brings up its own row of filters over the same product grid.

The homepage asks the same question first.

Right below the hero, the homepage splits into Our Collection and Shop by Occasion, so the choice starts before anyone reaches the shop.

Answering the chat questions before anyone asks them.

Price, what the piece is, how long it takes to ship and the small-batch note all sit together above the fold, next to Add to cart. Shipping and care details fold into two rows underneath for anyone who wants more.

Giving “this goes well with it” a place on the page.

In a chat, it was easy to suggest a second piece that went with the first. A product page has no one to make that suggestion, so Often Bought Together sits under every product to do it instead.

Custom work still starts with a conversation, just a clearer one.

Not everything Tofha makes is in the catalog. Custom pieces, bulk orders, workshop bookings and live sessions all start on the contact page, where one form changes with the type of enquiry. Phone, email, Instagram and WhatsApp sit next to it for anyone who would rather just message.

The homepage ends on a short custom-request form too, so nobody has to go looking for the contact page to ask for something made just for them.

Selling a workshop to someone who has never been to one.

Tofha runs craft workshops once a month, so the site sells those too. Upcoming sessions lead the page, each with a real date, time, price and one line on what you will make.

Below them, three steps (settle in, learn and create, take it home) answer what a first-timer actually wonders about, with photos from past sessions to show it.

Key pages in Figma, the rest designed in code.

The key pages started in Figma. The rest I designed directly in Shopify Hydrogen as I built them, which meant every layout had to work with real product photos from the first try. Building on Hydrogen instead of a theme meant the store could look like Tofha, not like a template.

Links to the store get shared in Instagram bios and WhatsApp chats, and those open on a phone, so every layout had to hold up at phone width.

What people come to the store to do, one thumb at a time.

Live, selling, and still changing.

The store is still a work in progress. New products, sections and fixes go in as real orders show what needs to change.

An identity the store could carry.

The wordmark sets tofha in a lowercase serif, with तोहफ़ा and تحفہ beneath it, so the word appears in three scripts. A brown and taupe palette over two pale papers runs through the packaging, the cards and the storefront itself.

Every piece shot in the same light.

Warm, low light, soft shadows and a plain beige ground, with props kept to almost nothing. Shooting bouquets, hampers and bookmarks the same way is what lets the shop grid read as one collection rather than a mix of uploads.

What arrives in the box.

The business card is printed on handmade paper with gold leaf and pressed gypsophila set into the sheet, so no two are the same. The workshop card is louder: a scalloped die-cut window over a floral photograph, billed to Tofha and Artt by NK.

What I learned