Alkoholibahus
Metrics
01
Overview
Alkoholibahus is an online alcohol store operating under Estonian law with its primary market in Finland. The platform needed to do something genuinely difficult: serve Finnish customers with a seamless, localized shopping experience while being built and managed entirely from Estonia. We delivered a multilingual e-commerce platform in Estonian, English, and Finnish — with a custom CMS, automated order notifications, a subscription system for exclusive offers, and a homepage architecture that puts the entire catalog in front of the customer without ever leaving the page.
02
Development
The core challenge was market fit: Finnish customers have high expectations for digital experiences, and the platform had to feel native — not translated. We built the multilingual system from the ground up, with Finnish as the primary locale and full parity across Estonian and English. The homepage was designed around a single conviction: the customer who lands on the site should be able to find, browse, and add to cart without clicking into a separate catalog page. All major drink categories are present on the homepage, with a full dedicated drinks page for deeper browsing. Orders flow into a custom CRM, trigger instant Telegram and email notifications for the operations team, and customers receive automated confirmation. A subscription feature captures email leads with exclusive offers, building a repeat customer base from day one.
03
Everything on the Homepage
Most e-commerce sites make you work to find what you want. Alkoholibahus was designed around the opposite principle: every major category is on the homepage, products are browsable without navigating away, and the path from landing to checkout is as short as possible. The new arrivals section highlights fresh stock. The catalog section lets customers filter by category, sort by price, and paginate through thousands of products — all without leaving the main page. For customers who want to go deeper, a dedicated drinks catalog page offers the full experience with sidebar navigation and advanced filters.
04
Built for Finnish Customers
Targeting a market in another country means more than just translation. Finnish customers expect a shopping experience that feels built for them — accurate pricing in euros, familiar payment flows, and an interface that reads and behaves naturally in Finnish. We built the multilingual system with Finnish as the primary locale, not an afterthought. Every product name, category label, UI string, and notification is available in Finnish, Estonian, and English with seamless switching. The age verification modal, subscription prompts, and checkout flow all follow Finnish UX conventions.
05
Orders, CRM, and Subscriptions
Behind the storefront, the operations layer is built for a small team running a high-volume catalog. Every order is captured in a custom CRM that gives the team a clear view of order status, customer history, and fulfillment. Telegram and email notifications fire within seconds of a new order — no dashboard monitoring required. The subscription system collects customer emails against an exclusive offers prompt, building a direct marketing channel from day one. All of this runs without third-party SaaS dependencies — custom-built, owned, and extensible.
06
A Platform Built to Scale
Alkoholibahus launched with a catalog of over 6,000 products across spirits, wines, beers, and non-alcoholic beverages. The database and API are architected to handle this volume without performance degradation — Redis caching keeps frequently-accessed category and product data fast, while PostgreSQL handles the structured catalog and order data. The front-end is built for mobile-first: GSAP animations, a swipe carousel for new arrivals on mobile, and an optimized checkout flow designed for one-handed use. The platform is live at alkoholibahus.fi and actively serving customers across Finland.