The Rewind started with a pretty simple conviction: Canadians deserve a better way to collect physical media. As a collector myself, I watched box store after box store close or remove physical media altogether, leaving only the likes of Amazon. It was obvious that Canada was becoming underserved when it came to DVDs, Blu-rays, and 4K UHDs, and I wanted to build a store that matched my own enthusiasm. As the sole proprietor of the store, I owned every part of its creation, starting with the full brand identity, from the name and logo right through to the visual language that runs across the storefront.
Because The Rewind is built on Shopify, a lot of the heavy lifting around cart, checkout, and product management comes for free. That said, a stock Shopify theme was never going to cut it. Instead, I opted to build out a custom theme using Liquid for the storefront layer, with HTML, CSS, and React powering the more interactive pieces. It let me keep Shopify’s solid commerce foundation while giving the shop a look and feel that actually reads as The Rewind rather than a default template.
Building The Rewind has been a nice reminder that not every project needs to be a sprawling SaaS platform to be satisfying. Sometimes the work is about taking good tools and shaping them around your own vision, getting the details right, and shipping something that people actually enjoy using.
Damn the man, save physical media.
 – The Rewind.png)