Shopify apps + expert theme work Livingston, Montana

We make Shopify stop needing you.

Kahakai builds Shopify apps and does the deep theme work most stores can't get support for. Kōkua, our first app, is a free accessibility scan. The rest, we handle by hand.

Try Kōkua — free scan See the theme work →
✦ Shopify Partner 11 years in premium themes Read-only, always Replies within 1 business day
Our first app · Kōkua

See where your storefront locks people out.

Kōkua loads your live storefront, runs axe-core against WCAG 2.2 AA, and returns a prioritized, plain-English, Shopify-specific report. The issues that drive ADA demand letters — ranked by how exposed they leave you. Read-only: it never changes your theme.

Real findings, not an overlay
axe-core scans the rendered page for the issues that actually drive litigation — no widget that fakes compliance and gets you sued anyway.
Prioritized, theme-level fixes
Every issue is ranked by severity with the WCAG criterion and a Shopify-specific fix at the Liquid level — where it belongs.
A shareable audit trail
Export the report as Markdown or JSON, track it in your scan history, and show the paper trail if anyone ever asks.
kōkua · scan of northfield-supply.myshopify.com
Read-only
Accessibility scanWCAG 2.2 AA · axe-core · 1 page
19 issue types
42 total instances
3
Critical
7
Serious
5
Moderate
4
Minor
Critical
color-contrast WCAG 1.4.3
Fix: Adjust theme color settings so text meets 4.5:1 (3:1 for large text). Watch buttons, sale badges, and text over hero images.
14 instances
Serious
image-alt WCAG 1.1.1
Fix: Add descriptive alt text to product and section images (theme editor, or image_tag with alt in Liquid). Decorative images use alt="".
22 instances
Serious
link-name WCAG 2.4.4
Fix: Give icon-only and repeated "Shop" links a discernible name — visible text or aria-label in the section snippet.
9 instances
Moderate
label WCAG 4.1.2
Fix: Associate a real <label> with each form field (search, newsletter, contact). A placeholder is not a label.
3 instances
Automated scan (axe-core) — catches roughly 30–50% of WCAG issues. Not a compliance certification; keyboard + screen-reader review is still required.
Scan your store free → Installs from the Shopify App Store · read-only · no overlay
The other half · done by hand

Premium themes end where your store begins.

A premium Shopify theme is a strong starting point. Your theme maker ships a capable, well-supported product. But the moment you customize it (and you will, because every real store needs real customization), you hit the edge of what support covers.

Every premium theme studio draws the line in the same place: "sorry, that's outside support." TaskHusky and Storetasker fill that gap for generic themes. Nobody fills it for the ones you bought.

That's the desk kahakai sits at — the same hands that build our apps.

Themes we've been inside.

03 studios
12+ themes
11 yrs in the craft
Maestrooo
2022 — present
Prestige
Focal
Impact
Warehouse
Archetype
2017 — 2022
Impulse
Motion
Expanse
Streamline
Out of the Sandbox
2014 — 2017
Turbo
Flex
Retina
Canopy
Work, documented

A recent rebuild, start to finish.

Theme: Prestige (Maestrooo) Catalog: 11,000+ SKUs Category: DTC apparel Engagement: Rescue + Rebuild

Three years of patchwork, rebuilt in four weeks.

The store had accumulated customizations from four different developers over three years. Cart drawer broken on mobile. Filter section hardcoded against a deprecated metafield. Theme updates blocked because every update undid a different custom section. We pulled the theme into a dev environment, audited every customization against the current theme version, rebuilt the sections that mattered using Prestige's native schema, and migrated what was worth keeping to theme app extensions so the next update doesn't break anything.

Load time
4.2s → 1.8s
Time in backend
12hr/week → 2hr/week
Theme updates
blocked → current
Anonymized at client's request · details available on request
How it works

Four steps. No surprises.

01
Book a call
30 minutes, no slides. You describe what's broken or what you want built. We confirm if we're the right fit.
30 min
02
Scope and quote
Within 2 business days we send a fixed-price quote with a defined outcome and a turnaround window. No retainers to unlock a quote.
2 business days
03
Build and verify
We do the work on a development theme first. You review before anything goes live. Every change is documented.
1–4 weeks (varies by scope)
04
Handover
You get the completed work, a plain-English change log, and a 14-day post-launch window for any follow-up issues at no cost.
14 days included

When your theme maker says "sorry, that's outside support," that's our line.

The premium theme specialist's edge kahakai
What we do by hand

Four ways we work with premium theme customers.

01
Fix
Something broke after a customization. An app conflict. An update that undid your edits. We diagnose it and fix it.
$750One-off
02
Customize
The thing the theme doesn't do natively. Built to survive theme updates and documented so you know what changed.
$3,000Project
03
Rebuild
The store has accumulated tweaks over years and nothing works right anymore. We take it apart and put it back better.
$12,000Project
04
Retainer
A specialist on call for ongoing work. Theme updates, seasonal changes, new sections, small asks. Hours flex to the month.
$5,000Monthly
What former colleagues and clients say

Receipts, not slogans.

“
Jamey is the kind of developer you call when something's broken and nobody else can figure out why. I worked with him at Maestrooo for two years. He'd untangle theme customizations most of us wouldn't touch, and the merchants he worked with always came back calmer than they started.
Eduardo Pimental
Senior Developer, Maestrooo
“
We hit a wall on a Prestige customization that had broken three updates in a row. Jamey diagnosed the root cause in about an hour and shipped a fix that survived every update since. Worth whatever he charges.
Derek Molina
Founder, Northfield Supply Co.
“
Hired Jamey for a Motion theme migration that the previous developer had made into a mess of custom sections. He rebuilt it cleanly, documented everything, and left the theme update-safe. First developer in three years I'd recommend without a caveat.
Priya Anand
E-commerce Director, Olsen & Company
Who runs this

I've been on the other end of thousands of theme support tickets.

I've worked inside three of the studios that made the premium Shopify theme market. Out of the Sandbox first, then Archetype, now Maestrooo. Eleven years of shipping themes, answering tickets, and watching merchants hit the same wall over and over.

kahakai is what I'd want if I were the merchant: someone who knows the theme cold, respects its architecture, and fixes what's broken. Kōkua is the same instinct, productized — the accessibility check I kept running by hand, now a scan any merchant can run themselves.

When a project calls for something outside my core, I bring in collaborators who are better at their specific thing than I am.

Founder · résuméVerified
2022 — now
Maestrooo
Theme support & customization
2017 — 2022
Archetype
Theme development
2014 — 2017
Out of the Sandbox
Theme development
11 years3 studios1 specialist

If that sounds like the kind of work you need, the call is 30 minutes.

— Jamey

Ready to hand it off?

Scan your store free with Kōkua, or book 30 minutes for the work that needs hands. We'll tell you if we're the right fit.

Try Kōkua — free scan or book a call