OVERVIEW
PROOF Hard Ice Cream: an age-gated Shopify store for an award-winning adult dessert
PROOF is an artisan hard ice cream from Columbia, South Carolina — alcohol as an ingredient at regulated levels, partnering with 500+ retailers and venues.
500+
Retailers, convenience stores, hotels and venues
21+
Age-gated storefront for a regulated product
Award-winning
Ultra-creamy adult treat from a family recipe
PROOF Hard Ice Cream
“We set out to create an indulgent taste experience that unites two of life's greatest pleasures — alcohol and ice cream.”
Jenn Randall & Dirk
Co-founders, PROOF Hard Ice Cream
01
About the project
PROOF was born from Southern grit and a family recipe: hard ice cream with alcohol as a regulated ingredient. The brand sells merch and finds-near-you online, partners with 500+ retailers and venues, and is raising on Wefunder — so the site has to sell, locate and recruit investors at once.
What we built: compliant from the first click · a locator for 500+ retailers · direct sales where allowed · the wefunder raise, front and centre. Performance figures are reported once the client shares analytics.
Client
PROOF Hard Ice Cream
Industry
Alcohol-infused ice cream · South Carolina
Platform
Shopify
Services
Compliant from the first click · A locator for 500+ retailers · Direct sales where allowed · The Wefunder raise, front and centre
Timeline
2024 – 2025
02
The challenge
A regulated product that needs an age gate, a store locator and an investor story on one site.
Alcohol content means compliance first. Beyond that, most sales happen in-store, so 'find us' matters as much as the cart, and the Wefunder raise needed a clear path.
“I'll stop the world and melt with you.”
PROOF · homepage
Dated storefront
The previous store no longer matched the brand or the way its customers shop on mobile.
Slow pages
Heavy media and app bloat pushed load times past where shoppers wait.
Hard to merchandise
Launches and promotions needed a developer every time.
Nothing to measure
No clean analytics meant nobody could say what the store was doing.
03
How it started
It started with a free store audit of PROOF Hard Ice Cream's existing storefront — what shoppers do on mobile, where the cart leaks, and what the team cannot change without a developer.
Rather than pitch the whole build up front, we proposed a focused sprint: fix the highest-impact pages first on Shopify, then extend to the full catalogue once the team was comfortable running it.
Haniel Singh · Creative Labs
Free store audit · PROOF Hard Ice Cream
1. Dated storefront: The previous store no longer matched the brand or the way its customers shop on mobile.
2. Slow pages: Heavy media and app bloat pushed load times past where shoppers wait.
3. Hard to merchandise: Launches and promotions needed a developer every time.
Watch the 3-minute audit04
Finding the direction
Before touching templates we agreed on one visual language for PROOF Hard Ice Cream: the brand's own photography, its own words, and a layout that puts proof where decisions happen.
We prototyped the homepage and the hero product page in the first two weeks and locked the system before building out collections.
05
What we built
Six moves, from the storefront to the flows that bring shoppers back.
AGE GATE
Compliant from the first click
A 21+ gate and regulated-product messaging on every entry.
FIND US
A locator for 500+ retailers
Store and venue locator drives the in-person purchase.
SHOP & MERCH
Direct sales where allowed
Merch and eligible products sold on Shopify.
INVEST
The Wefunder raise, front and centre
Announcement bar and invest page route interested customers to the raise.
OUR STORY
Founders and the family recipe
Story content that earns press and partners.
LAUNCH & CARE
Launched, then looked after
Ongoing care keeps retailers, news and the raise current.
06
The result
PROOF has one site that gates, locates, sells and recruits investors — with the founders' story at the centre.
Performance metrics to be added from PROOF Hard Ice Cream's Shopify analytics. Facts above are from proofhardicecream.com.
500+
Retailers, convenience stores, hotels and venues
21+
Age-gated storefront for a regulated product
Award-winning
Ultra-creamy adult treat from a family recipe
KEEP READING
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Tell us what you're selling.
Send us your store. Within one business day you get a short Loom from a senior: the three things we'd fix first, what it would cost, and whether we're the right team for it.
- No pitch deck, no discovery-call theatre
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