Ghia

Overview Ghia is the non-alcoholic apéritif that gave the sober-curious something beautiful to hold. Founded by Mélanie Masarin and launched in Los Angeles in June 2020, it bottles a Mediterranean aperitivo ritual, bitter, botanical and bright, with no alcohol, no added sugar and no artificial flavours. The range spans the Original and Berry Apéritifs in ribbed glass, five Le Spritz flavours in cans, the sparkling Le Fizz, glassware and gift sets, and Masarin’s cookbook Riviera. Ghia is poured in more than 3,500 retailers and restaurants and carries a 4.9-star rating across thousands of reviews. Huettun Labs partnered with Perron-Roettinger, the studio behind Ghia’s identity and packaging, and Varfaj, Ghia’s long-term Shopify partner now part of Avenue Z, on drinkghia.com. Huettun’s scope covered brand consultancy for the digital experience, UI/UX design and development of the custom storefront and commerce integrations.

The challenge Ghia sells a ritual, not just a drink. The store had to feel like aperitivo hour, warm, analogue and a little nostalgic, while doing demanding commercial work: explain a concentrate that needs mixing, let customers build their own spritz pack, make subscribing the default for a product people run out of, turn the holidays into group-gifting season, and send bar-goers to the nearest stockist. It also had to stay fast and accessible under a heavy app stack, and remain editable by a small team.

Brand consultancy (Huettun Labs, with Perron-Roettinger) From bottle to browser. We worked with the Perron-Roettinger identity, its 1970s display serif, burgundy and cream palette and European-café iconography, to define how it behaves in a shoppable interface: where the typography sets the mood and where the product grid stays quiet. Voice for commerce. Guidance that lets “We’re booze free, but our emails are intoxicating”, “Clear-eyed mornings” and “Just add bubbles” sit beside prices, quantity pickers and delivery frequencies. Ritual as structure. The site’s architecture follows the aperitivo: The Apéritif, Le Spritz, Le Fizz, Bundles, Objects and Recipes, so browsing feels like setting a table rather than scanning a catalogue. Founder presence. An Our Story page in Mélanie’s own voice, from childhood summers on the Mediterranean to “a drink you’d remember in the morning”, and a Riviera cookbook bundle that extends the brand into the kitchen.

UI and UX design (Huettun Labs) Visual system. Deep burgundy on warm cream, with powder blue and tomato red accents, set in a condensed French display serif for headlines and a clean sans for body copy. Layouts are mobile-first and scale through tablet, desktop and wide breakpoints, with reduced-motion styles for users who prefer stillness. Homepage merchandising. A launch hero for Le Fizz, a feature for the Riviera cookbook, a “Build your own Le Spritz pack” promotion, bestseller and Discovery Set tiles with star ratings, a “More to love” carousel and scrolling text marquees that carry the brand’s one-liners. Product pages that sell the ritual. Flavour and quantity pickers, a Subscribe & Save toggle at 15% off with delivery every 4 weeks to 3 months, tasting notes, “Our Magic Formula” (1 part Ghia, 3 parts bubbles), ingredients, servings, FAQs and Okendo reviews with search. Build Your Own Le Spritz Pack. A bundle builder where customers pick three flavours into a 12, 16, 24 or 48-pack, see the saving rise to 20%, and subscribe for 15% more, with perks spelled out: free shipping, a surprise gift with the second order, up to 25% off add-ons. Cart drawer. An in-page bag with a “How Many?” quantity stepper, bundle editing and removal, and Rebuy-powered add-ons. Group gifting. A “Something for the Whole Table” experience with 15% off gifts, personalised notes, send-to-one-or-many and a no-addresses-needed flow for corporate and holiday orders. Subscription hub. “Sip. Save. Repeat.” with subscriber picks, the perks (15% off always, skip, pause or cancel anytime, early access, free shipping) and an FAQ. Recipes. A filterable library (Aperitivo Hour Pairing, Original Apéritif, Berry Apéritif) of more than 40 drinks and dishes, from the Ghia Paper Plane to Poisson en Papillote from the cookbook. Every path to purchase. Find Near You store locator, a stockists page for trade, a Refer for $20 program, a reviews page, careers, a Spotify playlist and a published Accessibility statement with a skip-to-content link.

Website development (Huettun Labs, with Avenue Z) Platform. Shopify Online Store 2.0, a custom build on Shopify’s Dawn foundation with Tailwind CSS and native web components for the header, modals, gifting and list telemetry, so the team can compose pages from sections without a developer. Interaction layer. Swiper carousels, Rive animation and autoplaying product video, with prefers-reduced-motion support. Subscriptions. Subscribe & Save on every product and bundle through a headless subscription provider, with a Manage Subscription portal and frequencies from two weeks to three months. Bundle builder and upsells. A custom build-your-own pack flow wired to the cart, with Rebuy for cart add-ons and gift-with-purchase rules. Gifting. Zest group gifting for multi-recipient and address-free orders, surfaced as “Send as a Gift” on every product. Reviews, trust and support. Okendo reviews with on-page search, Route shipping protection, Redo returns, NoFraud fraud screening and a Stockist store locator. Growth stack. Klaviyo email and SMS, ShopMy creator affiliates, Hue shoppable UGC video, Triple Whale attribution and Google Tag Manager. Checkout and payments. Shop Pay accelerated checkout and PayPal. Agent-ready commerce. An agentic discovery sitemap, agents.md policy and Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) endpoint so AI shopping assistants can discover and buy from the catalogue. Performance, accessibility and security. Shopify’s global edge with Cloudflare, lazy-loaded imagery on more than 190 of 206 homepage images, nearly a thousand ARIA attributes, a skip link, HSTS, a content security policy and clickjacking protection. SEO foundations. Canonical URLs, descriptive titles and meta descriptions, Open Graph metadata, and real-time product, collection, page, blog and article sitemaps.

Results A storefront that turns one of the most admired identities in drinks into a shoppable aperitivo hour. Subscribe & Save on every product, a build-your-own pack with savings up to 20%, and group gifting that makes Ghia a default holiday gift. A 4.9-star rating across thousands of reviews, surfaced on tiles, product pages and a dedicated reviews page. A recipe library and cookbook bundle that keep the brand in the kitchen between orders.

Services delivered by Huettun Labs Brand consultancy · Digital brand expression · Content strategy · UI/UX design · Design system and typography · Shopify theme development · Web components · Subscription, bundle and gifting integration · Accessibility · Performance optimisation · Technical SEO

Technology Shopify OS 2.0 · Dawn (custom) · Tailwind CSS · Web Components · Swiper · Rive · Okendo · Klaviyo · Rebuy · Zest · Route · Redo · NoFraud · Stockist · ShopMy · Hue · Triple Whale · Google Tag Manager · Shop Pay · PayPal · Cloudflare · Universal Commerce Protocol