I recently just wrapped up a project setting up an online store for a client. I knew that building a custom e-commerce solution (or even tinkering with an open-source one) would be far too much work and require way too much maintenance. For this project, an established online service was definitely the way to go. After doing some poking around, I decided on Shopify.

Shopify – which I believe is built on Ruby on Rails – seemed to have a nice, clean, modern appeal to it. Pricing seemed inline with other popular solutions. It also seemed there were virtually no limits on the amount of design customization that could be done. This turned out to be true and we’ve been very pleased with Shopify. They’re Vision app (which basically sets up a quick temporary rails server) allows you to edit your theme locally and that’s just awesome. The HTML templates start off nice and clean and semantic. Their custom templating engine called Liquid works nicely and let’s you easily get what you need done.

The store is now live at www.iandmelectric.com. I&M sells solar/wind energy products as well as automotive and industrial products (batteries, starters, heaters, and more).

I&M has been already receiving many inquiries regarding their SolarSheat 1500g. It’s basically a solar heater for you’re home. It requires no electricity and uses a small solar panel to power the fan which vents the heat inside your home. Pretty cool. Good luck guys!