A couple of month ago, I wasn't planning to build an e-commerce platform.

A friend of mine is a fashion designer. He was preparing to launch a new collection and needed a website. At first, it sounded like a straightforward project: a storefront, product pages, checkout, and some content around the collection.

So I started building.

Like many side projects, the first version was supposed to be temporary. I thought we would launch the collection, make a few sales, and move on.

But very quickly I ran into a problem.

Most e-commerce solutions felt optimized for selling products, not for building brands.

Everything revolved around catalogs, filters, and templates. The brand story was usually an afterthought.

For a fashion brand, content is often just as important as products. Editorial photography, lookbooks, campaigns, stories, and product presentation all work together. Traditional storefronts separate these things instead of connecting them.

I wanted something different.

Instead of treating content and commerce as separate systems, I started building them as one product layer.

Lookbooks could lead directly into products.

Stories could become shopping journeys.

Editorial pages could connect naturally to the catalog.

At first, these were just custom features for a single project.

Then more requirements appeared.

Multiple languages.

Different markets.

Custom checkout flows.

Content management.

Inventory integration.

Admin tools.

AI-powered assistance.

What started as a small storefront slowly became a complete commerce platform.

At some point I realized I was no longer maintaining a project for a single brand.

I was building infrastructure.

Today that project is called SIB-ECOM.

It's an open-source commerce platform built around a simple idea:

Brands should own their infrastructure and have complete freedom to shape how their products are presented.

The stack currently includes:

• SvelteKit storefront
• Express + TypeScript API
• PostgreSQL with Prisma
• S3 / MinIO storage
• Multi-market support
• Content management tools
• Checkout and customer accounts
• AI and RAG-powered workflows
• Self-hosted deployment

The most important thing is that it isn't a demo.

The platform is already running in production for a real fashion brand Shisterov.to

Building it also changed how I think about software.

The internet already has enough platforms encouraging people to produce more content, more products, and more noise.

I'm more interested in helping people build better products.

Many independent brands don't need another marketplace or another SaaS subscription.

They need tools they can control.

That's ultimately why SIB-ECOM became open source.

Not because open source is trendy, but because the people building thoughtful products should have ownership over the systems they depend on.

What started as a favor for a friend became a platform, a production system, and an ongoing experiment in building better tools for independent brands.

And honestly, that's a much more interesting project than the one I originally planned to build.