Great Karoo Spirit
E-commerce
2026 – Present
Building a custom e-commerce platform for an award-winning craft gin brand that needed more than Shopify could offer.
Great Karoo Spirit produces Bossieveld Craft Gin — a range of gins made with hand-harvested indigenous botanicals from the Great Karoo. The brand has earned eight international awards including Double Gold at the Michelangelo International Wine and Spirits Awards, Best International Classic Gin at the American Distilling Institute, and Gold at the International Wine and Spirits Competition. Despite this international recognition, they were running their online presence on a basic WordPress site with no e-commerce capability — an award-winning product with no way to sell it directly to customers.
We built a complete custom e-commerce platform from the ground up using Next.js and Convex, integrated with PayFast for payments and Bob Go for nationwide shipping. Every aspect of the system — from real-time inventory management to order fulfillment and label generation — was engineered to give the brand full control over their direct-to-consumer sales channel, with the flexibility to scale as the business grows.
An internationally awarded gin with no way to sell online
Great Karoo Spirit had accumulated eight international awards across competitions like the Michelangelo Awards, IWSC, and the American Distilling Institute — but their outdated WordPress website had no e-commerce functionality. Customers who discovered Bossieveld Craft Gin at tastings or through awards coverage had no straightforward way to purchase it online. Meanwhile, South African craft gin competitors like New Harbour Distillery and Inverroche were already selling direct-to-consumer through polished online stores, capturing the growing market of premium spirits buyers who expect to order from their phones.
The brand had considered off-the-shelf platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce, but neither fit their requirements. They needed a system that could integrate with South African payment and shipping providers specifically, handle real-time inventory updates to prevent overselling of limited-batch products, and provide a backend where the team could manage everything from refunds to shipping labels — all while maintaining the flexibility to evolve as the business scaled. A template solution would have gotten them online, but it wouldn't have given them the control or the custom integrations they needed for long-term growth.
A custom-built e-commerce platform with real-time everything
We built the frontend with Next.js and the entire backend on Convex — a real-time database that keeps every piece of data synchronized instantly across the platform. This means pricing, stock levels, and order statuses update live: no customer can purchase a product at an incorrect price or buy something that's out of stock, because the storefront reflects the true state of the database at all times. This was critical for a craft gin producer where batches are limited and pricing changes with production runs.
PayFast handles all payment processing — one of South Africa's most established gateways — while Bob Go manages shipping through aggregated providers like The Courier Guy for nationwide delivery. We secured every edge case in the payment and fulfillment pipeline: failed payments, partial refunds, cancellation workflows, and shipping label generation are all handled from a custom admin backend. The platform was purpose-built for Great Karoo Spirit, but OpenIdle has since expanded this architecture into a broader e-commerce service offering for businesses that need more than what template platforms provide.
Real-time, secure, built to scale
The custom platform scores 97 on Lighthouse performance with a perfect 100 on Best Practices across every page, real-time inventory synchronization through Convex, and end-to-end payment and shipping management through PayFast and Bob Go — giving an award-winning craft gin brand the direct sales channel it deserved.
97 Lighthouse performance, 100 Best Practices, and real-time inventory sync — a custom e-commerce platform built for a brand that outgrew templates.
We needed more than a Shopify store — we needed a platform that could handle real-time stock for limited batches, integrate with South African payment and shipping providers, and give us full control over every order. OpenIdle built exactly that. The system is fast, secure, and we can manage everything ourselves.
OpenIdle built us a custom e-commerce platform that handles real-time stock, SA payment and shipping, and gives us full control over every order.