Wear LIC

Straight out of Long Island City, Wear LIC creates vibrant, bold, and unapologetically urban graphic tees, designed with an edgy modern aesthetic and crafted from 100% cotton for everyday comfort.

Challenge

Wear LIC came to us with an e-commerce presence that wasn’t keeping pace with their brand. Built on Squarespace, the site struggled on multiple fronts: a clunky, limited checkout experience, restricted payment options, and navigation that made it frustratingly difficult for customers to browse and locate collections. There was no product filtering system in place, leaving shoppers with no way to narrow down their search, a significant barrier to conversion.

Beyond functionality, the Squarespace interface itself proved unintuitive and difficult to work with. Managing products, updating inventory, and making even basic changes to the site required more effort than it should, creating unnecessary friction for the Wear LIC team on the backend and limiting their ability to efficiently run and grow their store.

The site also lacked visual identity. With minimal branding, no cohesive color scheme, and thin product descriptions, it failed to communicate the energy and personality behind the brand. A standout lookbook, one of their strongest brand assets, was buried at the bottom of the page where it went largely unnoticed.

Solution

After evaluating their needs, we recommended migrating from Squarespace to Shopify, a platform far better suited for scaling e-commerce. Shopify’s interface is clean, intuitive, and purpose-built for online retail, making it significantly easier for the Wear LIC team to manage their day-to-day operations. With far more robust customization options for product inventory management, including variant organization, collection structuring, and product detail control, the backend experience was transformed alongside the customer-facing one.

The redesign gave Wear LIC a visual identity to match their brand attitude. A bold blue anchors the header and footer, establishing brand consistency across the site. Navigation was restructured for both desktop and mobile, with product imagery surfaced directly in the menu for immediate visual engagement.

Their overlooked lookbook was reimagined as a hero slideshow on the homepage, transforming it from a buried afterthought into a commanding first impression. Product lines were reorganized into clearly defined collections on the homepage, alongside a dedicated section articulating the brand’s value proposition to build customer confidence.

Collection pages were designed to evoke the industrial character of Long Island City, reinforcing a sense of place and authenticity. A powerful filtering system was implemented across all collections, allowing customers to sort by multiple criteria and find exactly what they’re looking for with ease, directly supporting a smoother path to purchase.

Final Result

“We were looking for help updating our website. Surge River supplied us with a transparent proposal with clear pricing and timeframe. Throughout the process, Mike provided helpful tutorials over the changes in order to have a smooth transition afterwards. We are extremely happy with the results and would recommend Surge River to anyone needing website development.”

Since relaunching, both Wear LIC and their customers have been reaping the benefits of the redesign. The shopping experience is smoother and more enjoyable, with multiple payment options that remove friction at checkout and give customers the flexibility they expect from a modern e-commerce store.

Beyond the storefront itself, the migration to Shopify has opened up an entirely new ecosystem for the business. Wear LIC can now take advantage of Shopify’s extensive library of third-party apps to extend their store’s capabilities, as well as Shopify’s POS system for a seamless connection between their online and in-person sales. And with Shopify’s intuitive backend, the team can efficiently manage their inventory, products, and operations without the headaches of before, proving to be a true game changer for their growing business.