Balikbayan Lifestyle (Handicrafts)

A ground-up revamp of the online store for a Filipino heritage brand that’s been handcrafting home decor and accessories since 1968, moved to new hosting and rebuilt in WooCommerce to match designs from the client’s internal design team.

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Client

Balikbayan Lifestyle (Handicrafts), a heritage Filipino handicrafts brand

Role

Development only. WooCommerce, Elementor, custom code. Design by the client’s internal team

Scope

Hosting migration, full rebuild, design-to-dev

Built with

WordPress, WooCommerce, Elementor, custom code

Year

2026

Live site

balikbayanlifestyle.com

Overview

Balikbayan Lifestyle (Handicrafts) has been making handcrafted home decor and accessories since 1968, working with capiz shell, mother-of-pearl, and other natural materials sourced through Filipino artisans. The brand runs three physical stores in Metro Manila alongside its online shop, and its own internal team handles design and branding. For this project, that team had already designed the new site in Figma. My part was turning that design into a fully working WooCommerce store, on new hosting, built from the ground up.

The Challenge

This was a full revamp, not a patch job. Everything needed to move to new hosting, and the storefront needed to be built to match the finished Figma files closely, since my role here was development only.

• Migrate the site to new hosting without losing existing content or breaking anything live
• Rebuild the entire storefront in WooCommerce, matching the Figma designs exactly, page by page
• Handle a large, variant-heavy catalog, capiz, shell, and mother-of-pearl pieces with multiple styles and colors each, plus bags and fashion accessories
• Support PHP, USD, and CNY pricing for local and international customers
• Bring in custom code wherever Elementor’s built-in options couldn’t match the design spec

The Solution

01. Migration and foundation


Moved the site to new hosting and rebuilt the base theme structure clean, so the heavier ecommerce build had something stable to sit on.

02. Built out in WooCommerce


Set up the full catalog structure in WooCommerce, collections like Capiz, MOP, and Heritage, categories for Home & Living and Fashion & Lifestyle, and product variations for style, color, and size, all built on Elementor as the page builder.

03. Custom code to match the design


Wherever Elementor couldn’t hit the exact spacing, layout, or interaction the design team specified in Figma, I wrote custom code to close the gap, rather than let the build drift from the design.

Before / After

A Closer Look

The Results

A fully functioning multi-currency store


The site runs live today with PHP, USD, and CNY pricing built in, letting the brand sell to customers in the Philippines and abroad from one storefront.

A catalog built for variety, not workaroundse


Dozens of product variants, from capiz coaster styles to bag colorways, are handled through WooCommerce’s own variation system rather than one-off custom pages.

A clean move to new hostinge


The site moved to new hosting and was rebuilt from the ground up without taking the store offline or losing existing products and content along the way, so the brand kept selling while the new build went up underneath it.