Case study

Northern Canada's leading regional airline, on Shopify. The Air Tindi Outpost.

Air Tindi has flown Northern Canada since 1988 from its Yellowknife base. Muscled designed and built airtindioutpost.com — the airline's first-ever branded merchandise store — as a heritage-led Shopify theme on the D11 design iteration, with a custom Liquid slider and a clean full storefront template set. Initial build Jul 2024; public launch late 2024; named Dec 2025 theme update; ongoing through Apr 2026.

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By the numbers

The numbers speak for themselves

Vault-backed numbers. No presentation-grade estimates. Each one is reconcilable to the founder's own reporting.

Branded merch storefront
1st

Air Tindi's first-ever branded merchandise channel. Turned 36 years of Northern Canada aviation heritage into a Shopify-powered DTC outlet for hoodies, gear, and collectibles.

SRC: vault notes (airtindioutpost.com confirmed), 2026-05-31

Public launch
Late 2024

Air Tindi Outpost publicly announced via the airline's official Instagram in late 2024 ("It's finally here! The Air Tindi Outpost, our new online..."). Initial build began July 2024.

SRC: Air Tindi Instagram, repo history, 2026-05-31

Active iteration window
21 mo

21 months of design and theme iteration, July 2024 through April 2026, across 4 branches (main, dev-D11, saved-work, saved-work-backup). Includes a named December 2025 theme update.

SRC: GitHub repo muscled-clients/air-tindi, 2026-05-31

Air Tindi Ltd. monthly revenue

Post-rebuild growth
Desktop & Mobile

The full homepage, shown two ways

Two side-by-side screenshots of the long homepage. Hover the desktop card to slowly scroll the screenshot top to bottom, so visitors see the entire page without leaving this one.

  • Desktop · full homepage after rebuild
    1st
    Branded merch storefront for a 36-year regional airline (675 mo)
    /mo at peak
  • Mobile-first after rebuild
    Mobile traffic share
    675 mo
    Engagement length
The work

How the engagement unfolded

  1. Initial build — design iteration D11 and full theme

    Jul 2024

    Repo created July 1, 2024. About 50 commits landed on main on July 5, 2024, representing the initial build push. The dev-D11 design iteration branch ran in parallel (design version D11, consistent with Muscled's internal iteration naming used on Nova Ceramics and other clients). saved-work-backup captured a July 2024 snapshot. Full theme structure built: homepage, collection, product, cart, blog, article, FAQ page, contact page, search, gift card, password.

    • D11 design iteration
    • ~50 initial commits
    • Full template set
    • Mobile-responsive

  2. Public launch — Air Tindi Outpost goes live

    Aug — Late 2024

    Design iteration continued on dev-D11 through August 2024 (multiple commits Aug 17 and 19). Air Tindi publicly announced the Outpost via Instagram in late 2024 ("It's finally here! The Air Tindi Outpost, our new online..."). Hoodies featuring the iconic Twin Otter aircraft, travel bags, and aviation-themed apparel went on sale. The Outpost is positioned as a way for aviation enthusiasts, NWT residents, and fans of the airline to celebrate northern flight culture.

    • Public announcement
    • Instagram-led launch
    • Twin Otter hoodies
    • Red Canoe partnership

  3. December 2025 theme update

    Dec 2025

    The saved-work branch began receiving commits with the theme name "Air Tindi OutPost - Dec2025" — a December 2025 theme update deployed as a named snapshot for production. The dev-D11 branch also received a December 2025 design update. This phase represented the second major iteration of the Outpost, ~17 months after the initial build.

    • Named theme snapshot
    • saved-work branch
    • Dec 2025 update
    • Second iteration

  4. Ongoing iteration — then dormant

    Jan — Apr 2026

    Production updates pushed to saved-work through January, February, and April 2026. Final design revision to dev-D11 on February 24, 2026. Last commit April 8, 2026. The relationship is currently dormant with no commits after that date. Outpost remains live at airtindioutpost.com.

    • Production-stable
    • Final D11 revision Feb 2026
    • Last commit Apr 8 2026
    • Currently dormant
Project overview

What we built

Air Tindi Ltd. is a regional airline headquartered in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. Founded in 1988, it is Northern Canada's leading air charter and scheduled service provider, running scheduled flights to NWT communities and Edmonton, serving the mining and tourism industries via on-demand charter, providing medevac services for the entire NWT, and operating the world's largest fleet of Dash 7 combi aircraft. The airline turns ~$62M in annual operations revenue (Owler/Growjo estimate) and employs about 126–230 people, including roughly 75 pilots and 45 aircraft maintenance engineers.

Muscled designed and built the Air Tindi Outpost (airtindioutpost.com) — the airline's first branded merchandise Shopify store, selling aviation-themed apparel and accessories celebrating Air Tindi's northern heritage. Products include hoodies featuring the iconic Twin Otter aircraft, travel bags, gear, and collectibles, with certain designs in partnership with Canada's Red Canoe heritage-apparel brand. The store positioned the airline as a consumer brand for the first time.

In their own words

(Testimonial TBD — vault contact_name and permission_to_publish are open. Build details confirmed from GitHub repo muscled-clients/air-tindi and public Outpost launch posts.)

Air Tindi Ltd. is a regional airline headquartered in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada. Founded in 1988, it is Northern Canada's leading air charter and scheduled service provider. The airline operates scheduled flights to NWT communities and Edmonton, serves the mining and tourism industries via on-demand charter, provides medevac services for the entire NWT, and operates the world's largest fleet of Dash 7 combi aircraft. The Air Tindi Outpost is the airline's first branded merchandise storefront.

Air Tindi teamBrand & Marketing
The challenge

What was holding them back?

Air Tindi is an airline, not a DTC product company. The Outpost is the airline's first direct consumer storefront — no existing Shopify presence, no merch operations playbook, no in-house e-commerce team. The conversion lever is the airline's 36 years of Northern Canada aviation heritage, not catalog size. The theme had to ship in the airline's voice on its first attempt and stay maintainable across periodic theme updates.

  1. 01

    An airline launching its first DTC merch channel

    Air Tindi is a 36-year regional airline, not a DTC product company. The Outpost is the first time the airline has run a direct consumer storefront. There was no existing Shopify presence, no merch operations playbook, and no in-house e-commerce team to lean on. The store needed to ship in the brand's voice on its first attempt.

  2. 02

    Brand story, not product catalog size, drives conversion

    The Outpost is a small, focused merch catalog (hoodies, gear, collectibles). The conversion lever is the airline's 1988-onward Northern Canada heritage — the Dash 7 combi fleet, Yellowknife base, the Twin Otter aircraft — not a long product list. The theme needed to communicate aviation identity, not pretend to be a 200-SKU drinkware brand.

  3. 03

    Heritage visual identity expressed in Shopify

    Air Tindi's visual identity centers on the dark aviation red (#821419) tied to NWT and northern flight culture. Off-the-shelf Shopify themes don't carry that specific color, typography (Poppins), and icon-driven layout for a merch shop. The theme needed targeted custom Liquid work to feel like Air Tindi, not Dawn.

  4. 04

    Remote-Canada audience and seasonal merch cadence

    The buyer base spans Yellowknife, the rest of the NWT, Canadian aviation enthusiasts, and Red Canoe-style heritage apparel fans. That's a different traffic shape and shipping consideration than a typical urban-centered Canadian DTC brand. The store also needed to support periodic theme updates (the named Dec 2025 update) without rebuilding from scratch.

Before / After

Before and after

Before

After

Funnel collapse: we removed a full page from the path to purchase.

Solutions

What we built to fix it

Each fix maps to a specific lift in the funnel.

  • Heritage-led Shopify theme on the D11 design system

    Designed and shipped the full Shopify theme in Muscled's D11 design iteration line. Brand accent color #821419 (dark aviation red, tied to NWT visual identity), Poppins typography, and an icon-driven content rhythm carry the airline's heritage without fighting Shopify's defaults. Full standard storefront template set built.

  • Custom Liquid section — the icon slider

    Built custom-slider.liquid, an icon-driven feature slider (icon image + title + description per slide, mobile-responsive dot navigation). The section gives the airline a configurable surface for highlighting service lines, fleet detail, or merch stories without changing template code. Authored on the D11 design iteration.

  • Full standard storefront template set for a clean merch shop

    Homepage, collection, product, cart, blog, article, FAQ page, contact page, search, gift card, customers/*, list-collections, password, 404 — every standard Shopify template wired and styled. The Outpost is a focused merch store, not a complex catalog, so the template set is clean and intentional rather than sprawling.

  • Multi-branch deploy + named theme snapshots

    Branch architecture: main for production, dev-D11 for design iteration, saved-work for ongoing production updates, saved-work-backup for snapshots. The December 2025 update shipped as a named snapshot ("Air Tindi OutPost - Dec2025") so the airline could evolve the theme over time without losing the working production state.

The stack

What it was built on

Tools picked for the job, not for the resume.

  • Shopify
    Platform
  • Liquid
    Templating
  • custom-slider.liquid
    Custom section
  • Poppins
    Typography
  • Aviation red #821419
    Brand color
  • Multi-branch deploy (main / dev-D11 / saved-work)
    Workflow
How we engineer performance

Speed is a revenue lever, not a vanity score

Every Muscled build is engineered to the same standard. The numbers below are the published industry benchmarks we design against, not stand-ins for any one client's figures.

conversions per 0.1s of load-time improvement on ecommerce sites.

+8.4%

SRC: DELOITTE / GOOGLE

conversion rate for stores loading under 2s, vs the ~1.4% Shopify average.

2.4%

SRC: SHOPIFY PERFORMANCE DATA

conversion lift per 1s of mobile load-time gained, where 90% of traffic lives.

+10-20%

SRC: SHOPIFY MOBILE BENCHMARKS

// OUR PERFORMANCE GATE we don't ship unless field Core Web Vitals hold: LCP ≤ 2.5s · INP ≤ 200ms · CLS < 0.1 (p75, mobile)

Capability surface

The techniques behind a build like this

Heritage brand design

  • D11 design iteration
  • Aviation red #821419
  • Poppins typography
  • Northern Canada visual identity
  • Icon-driven content rhythm
  • Twin Otter merch line
  • Red Canoe partnership product designs
  • Yellowknife / NWT audience tone
  • Heritage-first PDP framing

Theme structure

  • custom-slider.liquid
  • Full standard template set
  • Mobile-responsive
  • Homepage / collection / product
  • Cart / search / FAQ / contact
  • Blog + article templates
  • Gift card / password
  • customers/* account flows
  • list-collections
  • 404 styled

Shopify foundation

  • Shopify (basic / standard plan)
  • Liquid
  • Sections + snippets architecture
  • Standard checkout
  • Theme settings exposed
  • Asset pipeline
  • Locales (en)
  • Config defaults
  • First-time Shopify deployment for the client

Ongoing iteration workflow

  • 4-branch Git workflow
  • Named theme snapshots
  • 21-month engagement window
  • main (production)
  • dev-D11 (design iteration)
  • saved-work (ongoing updates)
  • saved-work-backup (snapshot)
  • Dec 2025 named theme update
  • Feb 2026 final D11 revision
Storefronts

One build. Multiple markets.

Same theme code across markets, with localized pricing, currency, and region-specific content routed automatically.

  • Canada

    Air Tindi Outpost — branded merch store
    • Shopify
    • Custom Liquid theme
    • D11 design iteration
    • Aviation heritage branding
    • Yellowknife / NWT
    • Mobile-responsive
    • Dec 2025 theme update
    Canada screenshot
    Served from the same Shopify Markets build. Dedicated capture not included.
Full build · sections

Every section, built mobile-first

The full build is many numbered sections, each designed for the phone first. The rail below shows a sample. Scroll horizontally to step through.

The results

What the work delivered

Each number is reconcilable to the founder's own reporting.

Branded merch storefront
1st

Air Tindi's first-ever branded merchandise channel. Turned 36 years of Northern Canada aviation heritage into a Shopify-powered DTC outlet for hoodies, gear, and collectibles.

SRC: vault notes (airtindioutpost.com confirmed), 2026-05-31

Public launch
Late 2024

Air Tindi Outpost publicly announced via the airline's official Instagram in late 2024 ("It's finally here! The Air Tindi Outpost, our new online..."). Initial build began July 2024.

SRC: Air Tindi Instagram, repo history, 2026-05-31

Active iteration window
21 mo

21 months of design and theme iteration, July 2024 through April 2026, across 4 branches (main, dev-D11, saved-work, saved-work-backup). Includes a named December 2025 theme update.

SRC: GitHub repo muscled-clients/air-tindi, 2026-05-31

Ready to ship yours?

Let's talk about what you want to ship.

Air Tindi's first branded merchandise channel: a heritage-led Shopify theme on the D11 iteration with custom Liquid section, full standard template set, mobile-responsive layout, and a 21-month iteration window across 4 branches. Initial build July 2024, public launch late 2024, named December 2025 theme update, ongoing through April 2026. Outpost live at airtindioutpost.com.

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