The problem
Paint retail in Nairobi is brand-heavy, variant-heavy, and conversation-heavy. Buyers compare Crown vs DuraCoat, ask about coverage, pick tints, then confirm delivery or collection on WhatsApp. A static “products” page and a Facebook album could not carry that load — or rank for Kenya paint search intent.
Metumi needed a storefront staff could update, tools that reduce back-and-forth, and SEO pages for brands, colours, and buying guides — without forcing an online payment gateway they were not ready to operate.
What we shipped
Breon Studio designed and built the public shop and the ops layer behind it. Highlights we stand behind publicly:
- 130+ SKU catalogue — brands, categories, size variants, KES prices, stock flags
- Serious filtering — search with synonyms, category chips, brand, in-stock, price, sort
- Product UX — size pills, related items, tintable colour picker, primer suggestions, sticky CTA with live KES price
- Coverage estimator — room size → suggested litres (practical for paint, not vanity UI)
- Quote commerce — LocalStorage cart (including colour lines) → contact form prefill or WhatsApp. No online checkout by design.
- Colour tools — 4,000+ Crown + DuraCoat shades; chart browser; deep-link colour pages; canvas room preview for wall colour
- Kenya SEO content — crawlable product / brand / category landings, buying & price guides, FAQ + LocalBusiness / Product schema
- Site-wide WhatsApp and mobile-first storefront UX
Architecture (why this is a real build)
The interesting part for other retailers: a split stack.
- Public shop — static storefront on shared hosting + CDN for speed and simple ops
- Admin + API — product CRUD, stock, featured flags, image upload, publish live catalogue on Vercel
- Live catalogue API with a static JS fallback so the shop keeps working if the API blips
- Public host blocked from admin routes — storefront and ops stay separated
That pattern scales better than stuffing WordPress plugins into a paint catalogue — and it is honest about how Kenyan retail teams actually work.
Outcomes
Metumi Paints Centre now has a crawlable, filterable catalogue and colour tools on a domain they own — metumipaints.com — with an admin path to keep stock and featured products current. It is the kind of project that shows Breon Studio can ship retail systems, not only brochure sites.
Related services
Maps to e-commerce Kenya, web development, and web design. Similar builds fit tile, hardware, lighting, and building-materials shops across Nairobi.