Ayebea's Sankofa: Connecting Ghanaian Artisans to a Global Market

The Brief

Ayebea's Sankofa Marketplace sells handmade, fair trade goods from Ghanaian artisans — jewellery, waist beads, headwraps, apparel, beauty products and home décor, including the Kor.Le.Kour and Adinkra bead collections. Their mission is to build connections between cultures by bringing Ghanaian craftsmanship to a global audience, and the storefront had to carry that intent as much as the products.

The Challenge

Selling handmade goods internationally creates friction at exactly the point where a sale is won or lost. A buyer in another country needs to see a price in their own currency, pay with an instrument they trust, and understand shipping cost before committing. Any of those left unresolved at checkout costs the order.

There was a second, subtler requirement. A fair trade marketplace makes claims about provenance and artisan compensation, and a storefront that looks like a generic dropshipping site quietly undermines them. The design had to do the work of making the artisan story credible.

Handmade inventory also behaves differently from manufactured stock — pieces vary, quantities are small, and sizing needs explaining rather than assuming.

What We Built

We built a custom Shopify theme, using Shopify specifically for its mature international commerce handling — multi-currency pricing across more than fifty currencies and reliable cross-border checkout are solved problems there, and rebuilding them would have added risk without adding value.

Checkout integrates both Stripe and PayPal, covering the two payment methods international buyers most commonly expect, with a free-shipping threshold that gives customers a clear reason to consolidate orders rather than abandoning at the shipping line.

The theme foregrounds artisan stories and impact reporting alongside products, so the fair trade claim is visible in the shopping experience rather than confined to an about page. Size guides and measurement resources address the sizing uncertainty that comes with handmade apparel and accessories.

Delivered

• Custom Shopify theme designed around artisan storytelling
• Stripe and PayPal integration for international checkout
• Multi-currency support spanning 50+ currencies
• Curated collections including Kor.Le.Kour and Adinkra bead lines
• Free-shipping threshold and newsletter capture with first-order discount
• Size guides and measurement resources for handmade goods

Technology

Shopify · Liquid · Stripe · PayPal · JavaScript

The Outcome

Sankofa operates as an international storefront: buyers browse in their own currency, pay through Stripe or PayPal, and encounter the artisans behind the products as part of shopping rather than as a separate story.

The platform supports the marketplace's stated commitments — equitable artisan compensation, heritage preservation and funding for community initiatives — by making them legible at the point of purchase, where they influence the decision to buy.