The Plaza is one of New York's most iconic hotels, a landmark whose name carries a century of hospitality. Its retail business serves two identities at once: the hotel's own heritage brand and the world of Eloise, each with its own audience, merchandise, and personality, yet both under one roof and sharing one inventory.
Partnering with Espyus, The Plaza rebuilt its retail business as a single dual-brand commerce platform. We owned it end to end: concept and art direction for both brands, design, custom Shopify development, production, and launch.
The store carries two worlds at once: The Plaza, the hotel's own heritage brand, and Eloise, the character who has lived in its halls in storybooks for generations. Each has its own audience, aesthetic, and merchandise, yet both share one backend, one cart, and one checkout.
We started with a full review of the catalog, retail workflows, and existing digital experience. Discovery sessions framed the core challenge, then we built the sitemap, content model, and UX framework that let The Plaza and Eloise live under one roof without either brand compromising the other.
We started with the story and carried it through the whole path to purchase.
The homepage opens on the brand and its world, collection pages frame each edit in the context behind it, and product pages hold that narrative right through to add to cart. From landing to checkout, the experience reads as one continuous piece.
Each product page was shaped to feel less like a transaction and more like a moment inside the hotel itself.
Rich imagery, contextual storytelling, and a considered scroll bring the weight and intention of the brand into every interaction, from first impression through to cart.
The Plaza invites customers to take a piece of the experience home. The storefront carries that feeling through every collection, surfacing signature items alongside the editorial context and brand narrative that make browsing feel intentional and considered.
We built the storefront on Shopify through custom theme development, with bespoke sections, metafield-driven product data, and a shared cart and checkout. It connects directly to the hotel's in-store inventory, keeping stock accurate across both channels in real time, and scales with each seasonal collection.
With the art direction set, the photoshoot ran in parallel with design and development. We coordinated the shot lists against the site itself, page by page and component by component: what the existing catalog already covered, what still needed to be shot, and the aspect ratio each placement called for.
As the selects came back, they fed straight into content loading, finishing the site across every page so each image landed exactly where it was designed to go. The result is a commerce platform as considered as the hotel itself.
The store went live ahead of the holidays, The Plaza's busiest stretch of the year. Both brands and the full catalog were in place from day one.
Espyus took it from first concept to launch: art direction for both brands, design, a custom Shopify build, and the full shoot and content production. The Plaza's own merchandising and editorial teams now run the store day to day, putting collections and campaigns live on their own schedule. It carries the brand's history the way the lobby does, and lets anyone take a piece of The Plaza home.
