The shop was beautiful. On a phone, it wasn't.

Fabrico sells downloadable sewing patterns. The catalogue is good. The brand is good. The website works. What didn't work was buying a pattern on a phone.

That's where we started.

Sewing pattern customers browse on phones. They discover a design, look at the photos, check the size range, and decide whether to buy. The decision happens quickly, on a small screen, usually between other things. If that experience is slow, confusing, or simply not pleasant to use, the sale doesn't happen. The pattern doesn't get purchased. The customer goes somewhere else, or nowhere at all.

The existing app was functional. It felt like a website that had been pressed into a smaller space. That's a different thing from an app that was made for a phone from the start.

We rebuilt the app from the beginning on React Native and Expo, with a design system created specifically for how Fabrico's customers actually use a phone.

The home screen doesn't open on a product grid. It opens on a story: a large image, a curated selection of bestsellers, featured collections. A customer arriving for the first time sees a brand, not a catalogue dump. A customer returning sees what's new.

Fabrico patterns are sold by size and height. A size 40 in one height is a different cut from a size 40 in another. On the original app, selecting the right combination required navigating a table of options that took several steps to understand. We rebuilt the product page around a live picker: you choose your size, you choose your height, the price updates immediately. One screen, one decision, no table.

We built a ten-question quiz. It asks the customer what kind of sewing they do, what level they're at, what garments they like to make. The answers map to one of six customer types, and the result is a personalised set of pattern recommendations plus a 20% discount saved directly to the account. A customer who takes the quiz doesn't just browse; they get a starting point that feels chosen for them.

The Learning Hub, which contains the Fabrico blog, is built natively into the app. Editorial content and the shop are in the same place. A customer reading about fabric choice can buy a pattern for the fabric they've just read about without switching applications.

The profile section carries order history, a downloads library, size charts, and how-to guides. Everything a returning customer needs is in one place, behind one login.

Checkout was the hardest part to build. Stripe payment runs through a hosted page that can't be embedded inside a native app. We built a session that drives the payment in the browser, watches the order until it settles, and returns the customer to the app with the purchase confirmed and the download ready. From the customer's point of view, they paid and the file appeared. The implementation that produces that experience is considerably more complicated than it looks.

The app runs on iOS, Android, and web from a single codebase. Three weeks from start to delivery.