AmputiEase: rebuilding a stalled Shopify store into a real storefront
One real client, one real build. AmputiEase is a veteran-owned company selling an adjustable leg-rest stand for amputees and anyone recovering from a leg injury — 3D-printed to order, made in the USA. This is the honest version of what we built, not a highlight reel.
Where it started
Andrew — a U.S. Army veteran who lost his right leg to amputation in 2026 — already
owned the amputiease.com domain and a Shopify store when this project started. A
prior helper had begun it and then stalled: some product photos and a logo were loaded, but the
site itself was, in Andrew's own words at kickoff, confusing and unfinished.
His asks were direct: it needed to look more professional; customers needed to be able to pick any color and actually see it before buying, not guess from a swatch dot; and the site needed to show the product doing its actual job — including the restroom use case that's the whole reason it exists. In his own words, on the site today:
“On March 2, 2026, our family's life changed when I, Andrew, a United States Army veteran, underwent a right leg amputation. During this recovery, I quickly discovered a challenge many amputees face every day — finding a comfortable and secure way to support their residual limb while sitting in a chair or using the restroom. Out of that need, AmputiEase was created.”
— from AmputiEase's own About page.
What we built
No page builder, no purchased theme, no configurator app. The build is scripted directly against Shopify's Admin API (GraphQL) and Shopify's own Horizon theme — kicked off 2026-07-15, first commit two days later, 268 commits over roughly six weeks. Everything ran on a duplicated draft theme throughout; nothing went live without a real review first.
The real problem underneath Andrew's two asks — "any color" and "see it before you buy" — is that they don't compose on stock Shopify. Variants are finite, and a native color swatch is a dot, not a preview. We didn't over-engineer the first version: v1 shipped as real color variants with an actual photo per color. It then went further — the live product page now carries a 3D model of the actual leg rest that recolors live, plus a per-part configurator (saddle, outer shaft, inner shaft, base, lock lever, each colored independently). 23 colors across 3 sizes works out to 69 variants, and adding a new color is a single unattended script run: render, upload, patch the live theme, reorder the swatches, verify by reading it back.
Two decisions worth describing
The swatch problem
Shopify's native color swatches are driven by linked color-pattern metaobjects, and they're color-only — a two-tone combination can only ever render as a single dot. We generated diagonal split-color swatch chips instead, so a two- or three-tone pick actually looks like what it is before you commit to it.
The multi-buy discount
A "buy 2+" discount that applied as a single flat amount produced a confusing split cart on a 3-unit order. Rebuilt to scale per unit, and pegged to the live product price so it stays correct through any future price change instead of quietly going stale.
Also shipped: six transactional email templates styled to the brand, and a "Sponsor a Leg Rest" flow that lets a third party fund a unit for someone else.
Where it stands now
AmputiEase is live at amputiease.com, currently in its grand-opening pre-order window. We're not going to invent a sales number or a testimonial to make this section sound bigger than it is — there isn't one yet, and we'd rather say that plainly than pad it. The honest claim is: the build is real, it's live, and it's Andrew's to run from here.
