How The4 built custom product & collection page templates for Starboard

About:

Starboard is a world-leading designer and manufacturer of stand-up paddle boards, windsurfing and wing foiling equipment. Founded in 1994 by windsurfing champion Svein Rasmussen, the brand has become one of the most recognised names in watersports, trusted by athletes and weekend paddlers in more than 90 countries.

Starboard is also known for putting sustainability at the heart of its business — from eco-conscious materials to its mangrove-planting and plastic-offset programs.

Industry:

Watersports & sporting goods

Location:

Bangkok, Thailand

A premium product deserves a premium product page. For a brand like Starboard — where every board has its own story, technology and purpose — a generic Shopify layout simply couldn't do the products justice.

In this case study, we look at how The4 partnered with the Starboard team to design and build two fully custom Shopify templates — a product page and a collection page — matched to their brand vision pixel for pixel, on both desktop and mobile.

The Challenges

The Starboard team already had a clear, detailed design vision for their store, prepared as a complete Figma design for their new product and collection pages.

The problem was the gap between that vision and what a standard theme could deliver. Their existing pages were limited: they couldn't present the depth of information each board needs — specs, technologies, use cases and visuals — or organise a large, varied catalogue in a way that helped customers find the right board quickly.

Starboard didn't need a few tweaks. They needed two bespoke templates, built to an exact design spec, that were:

• Pixel-perfect against their Figma design, on desktop and mobile
• Flexible enough for their team to manage and reuse across products and collections
• Fast and clean, in keeping with a premium brand

The Solutions

The4 took on the project as a full custom development, working directly from Starboard's design documentation and Figma files. Rather than forcing the design into existing sections, we rebuilt the two templates from the ground up on their Shopify theme.

A custom product page template

We developed a brand-new product page template that gives each Starboard board the space it deserves — a richer layout for imagery, specifications, technologies and storytelling, structured so customers can absorb the key information quickly and buy with confidence.

Every element was rebuilt to match the Figma design exactly, then made fully responsive so the experience is just as polished on a phone as on a desktop.

A custom collection page template

For browsing, we built a custom collection page template designed to make a large, diverse catalogue easy to navigate. The layout helps customers scan products, understand the differences at a glance, and move smoothly from collection to product.

The challenges we solved

Translating a detailed, pixel-level design into a clean, maintainable Shopify build is where the real work happens. The harder parts of this project included:

• Matching a complex Figma layout precisely while keeping the code clean and easy for the team to manage afterwards
• Ensuring flawless responsive behaviour across desktop and mobile breakpoints
• Keeping the templates fast and lightweight, so a richer design didn't come at the cost of performance

Throughout the project, we worked iteratively with the Starboard team, reviewing the build against the design and refining the details until everything matched.

The Results

The4 delivered two fully custom, brand-aligned Shopify templates — a product page and a collection page — built to Starboard's exact design specification and signed off by the client on completion.

"So I'm happy — and the other change on the Collections page, moving the text, also good. No further questions for now, thank you."

— Chris Couve, Starboard

With the new templates in place, Starboard's store can now:

• Present each board with the depth and polish a premium product needs
• Offer a consistent, on-brand experience across desktop and mobile
• Give the team reusable templates they can manage and extend themselves

For Chris Couve and the Starboard team, the outcome was a store that finally matched the quality of the products it sells — a design vision turned into a working, maintainable Shopify reality.

Conclusion

Off-the-shelf themes are a great starting point, but premium brands often need more. The Starboard project shows what's possible when a clear design vision meets a team that knows Shopify inside out.

By building custom product and collection templates to an exact spec — and solving the tricky responsive and performance details along the way — The4 helped Starboard ship a storefront worthy of their brand.

If your store has outgrown what a standard theme can do, this is exactly the kind of work our team does every day.

Need a custom Shopify build? Explore The4's Shopify services, or browse our premium Shopify themes trusted by 48,000+ merchants worldwide.