Restored Timbers, a family-owned business in Long Island, New York, has been crafting handmade reclaimed wood furniture since 1995. They came to us with a problem we see all the time: a website that just wasn't working. The client had been burnt by a previous agency that promised a lot but delivered very little. They felt lost and didn't know what the right move was.
Their whole business is built on unlimited customization. They have four unique wood styles—America, Rustic, Farmhouse, and Butterfly—that are available in multiple colors. These can be combined with multiple base styles to create millions of potential table designs. When you add their chair styles and bench options, the number of potential combinations is virtually limitless. This unique offering needed to shine on their website.
Moving to Shopify: Contrary to most agencies that recommend the one platform they know how to build, we have no bias when it comes to which platform to use. We just pick the right one for the job. For Restored Timbers, Shopify was the perfect fit. It's a platform built for serious e-commerce, with the tools they needed for custom shipping calculators and 3D product builders.
We started with a deep dive into their existing site to figure out what was broken. Our audit revealed four major issues:
To fix these issues, we recommended UX research through customer interviews to understand their target audience's real behavior. We conducted our user research in two parts:
1:1 Interviews: We interviewed six people who fit the buyer persona but had never heard of Restored Timbers to get unbiased first impressions.
In-Store Survey: We provided a survey for the showroom to understand why people were choosing to shop in person.
Our research confirmed the website was cluttered, the navigation was confusing, and users wanted more "About" info. We also discovered that most people add items to their cart and get a second opinion before buying.
One major takeaway: users wanted AS MANY customization options as possible. Giving customers control over choices was a major priority. When we showed them a single-page product builder, they loved it. We knew exactly what we needed to build. The solution: a 3D product rendering tool to automatically create every combination on the fly.
To pull this off, we had to get creative. We created a roadmap, found specialized photorealistic 3D designers, and selected Zakeke as the fast-loading Shopify 3D configurator app. We also pioneered a new process using AI to create hyper-realistic lifestyle images instead of fake-looking Photoshop jobs.
The 3D models were crafted using 3D Studio Max (3ds Max) with real studio lighting. For the AI lifestyle images, we used their new 3D renders with tools like Adobe Firefly and Nano Banana, finishing them in Photoshop. We even used Google Veo3 to animate them.
The website design was 100% custom and built with the user in mind. We went through our standard steps: sitemap, wireframes, creative direction, content strategy, copywriting, and UI design.
We changed the confusing "collections" terminology and created a new "Signature Wood Tops" section. The biggest challenge was mapping out every possible combination in Zakeke, ensuring the 3D model would update instantly with accurate pricing. The result is a fast, reliable tool that truly shows off what makes Restored Timbers special.
.png)
