Built for Enterprise Brands

At Domaine, we believe that the most effective commerce experiences start with clarity: clear design, clear goals, and clear systems.

We’ve spent the last several years building high-performance Shopify storefronts for some of the most ambitious brands in the space. Along the way, we kept running into the same challenge: existing themes and frameworks weren’t built for the kinds of custom experiences our clients were asking for.

So we built Foundation.

Foundation is our internal Shopify development framework. It’s not a theme; it’s the starting point for building something uniquely yours. Fast, flexible, and obsessively maintainable, Foundation is what lets us move quickly without cutting corners, and evolve with our clients instead of against the grain.

Key Features

1. Foundation Sync: automatic updates sent straight to the theme

With Foundation Sync, our team has pioneered an automated way to update Foundation-based projects, using a Github action to pull in changes to core files. This GitHub Action automatically syncs core framework files from our base repository (meetdomaine/project-foundation) into active Foundation projects. It runs weekly and opens a pull request with any detected changes to ensure projects are up to date with the latest updates.

Each week, Foundation Sync:

• Checks out the latest files from the Foundation base repo.
• Compares the base src/entry/core/ directory against the current project’s src/entry/core/.
• Copies updated files from Foundation into the target repo, without deleting any unrelated files.
• Creates a pull request listing the changed files for review.
• Uses AI to summarize the changes for easy integration.

The sync process is scoped to Foundation’s core directory, the shared framework logic that powers every project. By limiting updates to this directory, it avoids overwriting project-specific configurations or customizations. This scoped approach ensures updates remain safe, predictable, and easily reviewable, all while still enabling us to roll out improvements to shared infrastructure.

2. Reusable theme blocks & dynamic sections

Shopify’s new Theme Blocks put more control in the hands of merchandisers, providing the ability to drag-and-drop content blocks to create custom sections. Foundation expands on this by combining reusable theme blocks with dynamic sections. This new theme structure allows us to provide control over content and layout at the component level, enabling granular control of layout, spacing, and content placement for each section on the site.

This flexibility allows teams to build and configure sections without developer bottlenecks, while maintaining clean, consistent code.

With Foundation, we can:

• Let merchandisers add any available block
• Restrict sections to specific block types
• Enable blocks to nest inside other blocks
• Create “Static Blocks” that stay in appear in a specific part of the code, within their parent block or section.

Working example:

Imagine a site merchandiser is building out a slideshow section. We can set up the section to:

• Limit it to only accept Slide blocks.
• Let each Slide block contain any other block type available within the theme, such as Heading, Text, Button, Divider, or Image.
  • These blocks could be reordered or hidden as needed.
• Add a static "Slideshow Controls" block that stays locked in place

Foundation provides merchandisers the freedom to customize slide content beyond just the layout shown in the original designs.

3. (New) customer accounts built-in

Shopify has made clear their intention to eventually sunset legacy customer accounts. To ensure we’re building for the future we are deprecating legacy customer accounts in Foundation and defaulting to (new) customer accounts.

New customer accounts offers:

• Passwordless login for faster access and fewer bot attacks
• Self-service returns, “buy again” functionality, and native order filtering and sorting
• Saved payment methods
• Unified styling that inherits from store branding, no custom templates required

By baking these features into the framework, Foundation ensures your storefront is future-proofed against Shopify’s account deprecations and ready for modern customer experiences.

4. A polished look for modern commerce

Foundation builds directly in line with Domaine’s design philosophy: starting with atomic components that build into blocks, sections, and pages, all while adhering to brand guidelines.

To demo the theme and prove out our approach we created our own brand: with AI placement content, products, and a full pattern library, showing how streamlined the process is to move from design into implementation.

Built Around Domaine Engineering Principles

1. Build for the next version of your brand

We design systems that scale—visually, technically, and operationally. From utility classes to component structure, every part of Foundation is designed to grow with you.

2. Make the right decision early

Foundation integrates tightly with our discovery process. That means tech decisions aren’t made in a vacuum—they’re shaped by your business needs, marketing roadmap, and customer journey.

3. Performance isn’t negotiable

Site speed and stability directly affect conversion. Foundation is optimized to minimize JS payloads, streamline code delivery, and reduce dependencies wherever possible—especially on mobile.

4. Build inclusively, code accessibly

Accessibility and SEO are embedded into our workflow from day one. We design and code with AA compliance in mind, and we audit regularly to make sure nothing slips through.

5. Use Shopify like it’s meant to be used

Not every problem needs an app. Foundation favors native solutions and smart configuration, so brands can take full advantage of Shopify’s capabilities without bloating the stack.