AriZona Beverages
AriZona Teams Up with Avex for a Complete Digital Transformation and a New Membership Rollout
Services
- Shopify Development
- Creative Direction
- Loyalty & Rewards Strategy
- UX/UI Design
- Email Marketing
- Content Strategy & Product Architecture
The Challenge
AriZona Beverages, best known for its iconic $0.99 iced teas and instantly recognizable branding, didn’t see D2C as just another sales channel but an extension of the brand’s voice and a platform to shape culture. With retail and B2B already driving the majority of revenue, the direct-to-consumer opportunity was less about volume and more about value: telling richer stories, nurturing brand loyalty, showcasing new product lines like hard beverages, sparkling water, and merch, and building a deeper relationship with the brand’s passionate fanbase.
However, delivering on that vision required a more scalable and enterprise-ready digital foundation. Their existing site lacked the structural flexibility to handle a growing catalog, the storytelling capabilities to bring each product line to life, and the infrastructure needed to support a personalized, loyalty-driven journey.
Technology Partner
- Shopify
- Inveterate
- Klaviyo
- Rebuy
- Skio
- Okendo
- Aftership
The Approach
AriZona’s evolving product landscape demanded a flexible, scalable, and deeply branded eCommerce platform. Avex responded with a strategy-first approach, starting with intensive discovery workshops to overhaul site architecture, product taxonomy, and menu link tree.
We introduced a modular design system that adapts to multiple product templates and compliance needs, and built a fully custom membership program from the ground up. This allowed the AriZona team to seamlessly manage a growing catalog while launching subbrands with distinct identities. The final solution delivers robust infrastructure, seamless UX, and a digital experience built to evolve alongside the brand’s innovation roadmap.
Unlocking Shopify’s Full Potential
While AriZona was already on Shopify,their store was built on an outdated theme with a lot of legacy code and product architecture logic that was incompatible with the output of our discovery. Avex led a comprehensive migration that went far beyond a simple lift-and-shift, rebuilding the product architecture, taxonomy and filtering, and navigation from the ground up. With a rapidly expanding SKU count and new subbrands launching mid-project, the migration required detailed data mapping, agile template development, and rigorous data transfer QA.
Grounded in strategic discovery, we facilitated cross-functional workshops, conducted technical audits, and leveraged customer insights to align stakeholders and architect a flexible, high-performance foundation. This was a migration built not just for today’s needs, but for long-term scalability, speed, and adaptability.
Engineering a Flexible Architecture
The foundation of Arizona’s new DTC experience was a ground-up rebuild of their Shopify Plus storefront—engineered for performance, modularity, and long-term scalability. Built on Shopify’s Online Store 2.0 framework, the custom theme architecture leverages dynamic sections, schema-driven logic, and metafield-powered templates to support a highly diverse and evolving catalog. To address Arizona’s varied product requirements, we developed flexible templates for:
- Standard food & beverage products — with structured content blocks for nutrition facts and product attributes
- Subscription SKUs — integrated with Skio to support recurring order flows
- In-store–only products — surfaced through Stockist for location-based availability
- +21 alcoholic beverages — featuring age verification gates and custom-branded PDPs
- Lifestyle merchandise — supported by size guides, upsell features, and “shop the look” merchandising
- Club 'Zona exclusives — gated for members via Inveterate, with checkout restrictions tied to loyalty status
The result is a system of reusable, schema-configurable components designed to scale across product types and subbrands—eliminating redundant code and enabling rapid deployment of new SKUs and experiences. This architecture empowers Arizona’s teams with simplified content management, leveraged metafileds intsead of tags to limit human error, operational efficiency, and the flexibility to grow their DTC business without reengineering the core theme.
Designing for Brand Fluidity
AriZona’s bold, nostalgic visual language is instantly recognizable—and our design strategy brought that spirit online. We translated the brand’s vibrant colors, retro patterns, and playful typography into a digital system that felt uniquely AriZona.
At the heart of our approach was modularity: a flexible design language that could scale across subbrands like AriZona Hard and Santa Fe, each with distinct aesthetics. Custom colorways and content styles mapped by product types and flavors gave each subbrand a unique presence, while shared UI patterns ensured consistency and overall brand cohesion and recognition. The final product was a dynamic, on-brand experience where every page told its own story but spoke the same language.
Reimagining Loyalty
What began as an open-ended ambition became a strategic differentiator. AriZona asked us to create something meaningful—something fans would feel, not just use. The result was Club Zona: a membership based loyalty platform built from the ground up to drive engagement, exclusivity, and retention.
Throughout the project, our role extended beyond execution. We provided strategic guidance to shape the program’s structure, benefits, and backend workflows, ensuring it could grow alongside the brand. Club Zona is now a fully owned, brand-aligned growth lever that delivers on both emotional loyalty and long-term commercial value.
The Partnership
Our engagement with AriZona operated at the intersection of creativity and executive strategy. From the outset, their leadership team looked to Avex as a thought partner. We collaborated closely on vision, prioritized long-term scalability and goals over short-term wins, and co-developed digital initiatives that supported business growth beyond commerce. This high-trust relationship enabled bold thinking, agile execution, and ultimately, the delivery of a digital experience that reflects the brand’s cultural weight and future ambitions.
Let’s work together
Tell us your business goals and we’ll see how we can create something amazing together.