A Delayed Flight and a Cup of Coffee Changed the Direction of My Career

I come from a background of building dashboards and web applications in Next.js, Node.js, React and Remix. I like systems, I like code, and I like solving hard problems. That's the lens I take into every tech conversation.

In early 2024 I was in Dubai attending exhibitions. The plan was clear: meet people, explore opportunities, land a full-time role. That was the entire focus. I had no intention of becoming a Shopify freelancer. I was not looking for a pivot. I was looking for a job.

Then I walked past a row of Shopify stalls at one of the exhibitions. And something shifted.

The Shopify Stalls That Did Not Sit Right With Me

I got curious and started talking to the people at these Shopify stalls. Not because I was looking to get into Shopify - mostly because I wanted to understand what tech stack they were using. Tech conversations always pull me in.

Their answer stopped me cold: “We use premium themes. No coding needed.”

I asked to see their portfolio. Every single store looked the same. Generic layouts, the same section structures, the same fonts, the same feel. No character. No individuality. These were meant to be brand stores - but none of them actually felt like a brand.

Something about that did not sit right with me. These businesses were putting their brand identity into a template that thousands of other stores were already using. I knew enough about custom development to know that was not the ceiling - it was just the floor most people never looked below.

How a Cup of Coffee Changed Everything

My flight back to India got delayed. I sat down at a cafe in the airport - tired, a little restless, and supposed to be thinking about the job offers I had been exploring.

Instead I kept thinking about Shopify. About what it could really do if someone actually wrote custom code for it - instead of just picking a theme, tweaking colours, and calling it done.

I boarded the flight with a plan to sleep. I genuinely needed rest after the trip. But I could not switch off. The whole flight I was reading, exploring, going deep into how Shopify actually works under the hood - Liquid templating, the Storefront API, the architecture of the platform.

By the time I landed, I had made up my mind. I was going to build Shopify stores from scratch. Custom code. No templates. No shortcuts. The same precision I brought to building dashboards and web apps, applied to e-commerce stores that actually looked and felt like the brands they represented.

What I Saw That Most Shopify Developers Miss

The Shopify ecosystem is enormous. There are thousands of developers working in it. But a large portion of what gets called “Shopify development” is really just theme customisation - adjusting a template someone else built, installing plugins, tweaking settings inside a visual editor.

That works for a lot of brands at the early stage. There is nothing wrong with it as a starting point. But brands that have grown - that have real customers, real traffic, and real ambitions - need something different.

They need a Shopify expert who can write code from scratch. Who builds the storefront line by line, using Shopify Liquid, Alpine.js, and Tailwind CSS. Who does not reach for a plugin when a clean custom solution will do the job better and faster.

That is the gap I saw in Dubai. And that is the gap I built my practice around.

What 30+ Custom Stores Later Looks Like

Today I work as a Shopify freelancer based in Delhi, delivering custom-coded stores for brands across India and globally - clients in Delhi, Gurgaon, Mumbai, Dubai, the UK, and the USA.

Every store is written line by line. The design, the layout, the interactions, the checkout experience - all of it built exactly the way the client needs it, not squeezed into the constraints of a pre-made template.

I have worked with fashion brands, D2C labels, home and lifestyle stores, food brands, and service businesses. The common thread is always the same: they came in because their existing store was not working the way it should, and they left with a store that actually represented their brand.

That curiosity at the Dubai exhibition - that moment of thinking “there has to be a better way to do this” - is what started all of it. A delayed flight gave me the time to think it through. The plan I made on that flight is the practice I run today.

Why This Still Matters to Me

I did not become a Shopify developer because it was the obvious career move. I became one because I saw a clear gap - between what most Shopify stores looked like and what they could look like with proper engineering behind them.

Most brands hiring a “Shopify expert” today are still getting theme customisers. People who know how to use the platform, but not how to build on top of it. The difference shows in the speed, the design precision, and whether the store actually converts.

Whether you're a brand in Delhi looking for a Shopify freelancer, or a business in the USA searching for a Shopify developer who codes from scratch - the story that started in that Dubai airport is the reason I do the work I do. And it's the standard I hold every project to.

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