Indian Octopus curates designer products to expose valuable merchandise to new markets. Their old site buried new arrivals behind algorithmic personalisation. We redesigned the experience to put editorial discovery front and centre — and built the design system that would support it long-term.
Indian Octopus curates genuinely interesting designer products — the kind that get buried on Flipkart and Amazon because they don’t have the review velocity to surface organically. The existing site had the right products but the wrong experience: it relied on the same algorithmic personalisation patterns that were actively working against its curation mission.
New arrivals — often the most interesting items — were hidden behind search. Returning users saw the same recommendations loop. The editorial intelligence behind the curation was invisible in the interface.
The core design decision was to treat Indian Octopus like a magazine, not a marketplace. Editorial collections, featured makers, and thematic groupings became the primary navigation — not categories and filters.
Because Indian Octopus publishes new collections regularly, they needed a design system their team could use — not just a set of Figma screens. We built a component library covering the full range of editorial and product surfaces, with usage guidance for each component so non-designers on the team could build new pages without breaking the visual language.
The rebrand retained the playful energy of the original name while giving it more visual weight — a mark that could hold its own alongside the premium designer products in the catalogue. Earthy, editorial, and distinctive without being loud.
The redesigned site puts new arrivals and curated collections where they belong — at the top of the experience. Indian Octopus can now update their editorial surfaces without a developer, using the design system components we built for them.
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