Overview
Headless ecommerce pairing self-hosted Strapi v5 (rich editorial content, brand stories, lookbooks) with self-hosted Medusa.js (cart, checkout, inventory). Arabic-first product storytelling, Omani craftsmanship metadata fields, and a gift-message card builder. Organic traffic triples in 4 months post-launch; average order value rises AED 210 on gift orders.
The challenge
The brand's unique selling point was hand-crafted Omani designs with cultural storytelling — a differentiator completely invisible on a vanilla Shopify store. Product pages needed rich editorial content about the craftswomen behind each piece, something Shopify's product-description field could not handle. The brand also needed full data ownership to avoid Shopify's transaction fees and data-sharing terms.
The solution
We built a headless architecture where Strapi v5 owns all editorial content — product stories, craftswomen profiles, lookbook collections — and Medusa.js owns the commerce operations. Both are self-hosted on an Omani cloud instance for data residency. The Next.js frontend fetches product narrative from Strapi and pricing/inventory from Medusa in parallel, combining them at build time via ISR. A gift-card builder component in Medusa was extended to support Hijri calendar date selection for Eid orders.
Outcomes
Organic search traffic tripled in 4 months
Gift order average value increased by AED 210
Zero Shopify transaction fees saving AED 18k/year
Brand story page engagement 4.8 minutes average session time
Key metrics
Tech stack
Services
Client testimonial
“We finally have a store that tells the story of our crafts, not just lists prices. Our customers spend time reading about the women who made their abaya and that connection drives loyalty.”
— Suhaila Al-Balushi, Founder — Tharwa Fashion
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