LemonStand Blog

Showcase: Fair Trade Jewellery

0 | published by Danny Halarewich on Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Fair Trade Jewellery Co. designs and creates ethical, environmentally sensitive custom, bridal, and engagement jewellery.

They promote sustainable community development by using premium Fair Mined Gold and Platinum from small artisanal mining communities in the Chocó rain forest, Colombia. Custom designs are made in our atelier using only Certified Canadian Diamonds, creating some of the most luxurious and exclusive socially conscious products in the world.

What is your opinion on LemonStand's template system?

"We were able to completely re-skin LemonStand without affecting our ability to take updates to the core codebase. So by virtue of that alone, we found it to be entirely flexible and a great environment in which to work."

Have you ever used other shopping carts such as Magento, CubeCart or others? If so, how do you think LemonStand compares?

"We tried other systems but they were not as easy to modify as LemonStand. We were, at one point, looking at Business Catalyst because their system had a slick back-end similar to LemonStand's. But the problem was it was based upon Microsoft technology and it was a hosted solution. We found it to be expensive and in their user forums there were lots of complaints about speed. We found speed issues were common with users of Magento as well.

Based upon all of our research, we found that LemonStand offered the same things we liked about Business Catalyst but with the advantage of being hosted on our own systems and the fact that it was written in PHP (we're a PHP shop)."

What are some of your favorite features of LemonStand, and why?

"What's best about LemonStand for us is the support. The whole system was good to start with. But the fact that when we needed new features implemented or help figuring out how to solve a problem, we had an answer within 24 hours was an amazing help in building our site. "

Did using LemonStand make your development process faster, more enjoyable, more creative, etc?

"Again, the fact that we had direct access and responses from the developer made our site build faster, more enjoyable and allowed us to build a site that looked the way we wanted it to look. It has been an unparalleled experience for us. And we have been developing sites for many years."

Would you recommend LemonStand to others who need an eCommerce site? Why?

"We would recommend Lemonstand because even with the default templates you get a presentable, easy-to-use site. And if you want to take it to the next level as you grow, you can make your site look however you want."

How does your client feel about using LemonStand? Do they have a favorite feature?

"Well, we are the client. We do our own development. So the previous answers cover this."

- Ryan Taylor, Founder –Fair Trade Jewellery Co.