Merchant is the brain child of our in-house pixel wrangler Mr Cobus Bester. His idea was to design a theme with a unique adaptive layout with advanced customization controls, to help equally highlight all the business modules of our popular themes, along with the capabilities of showcasing a portfolio, blog and mini-features with JS Masonry. Think of it as an alternative to some of the popular hosted solutions for designers showcasing portfolios and selling prints.

Based on the findings of Whitelight, Merchant is also designed with the WooComponent widgetized homepage functionality. What does this mean? You can easily place any of the homepage modules in any order, excluding or including particular ones. Your homepage is your “canvas” to do what you like with.

Once Cobus was happy with the final design Jeff added some neat layout controls giving you creative reigns as to how your site should scale – e.g. do you want the menu system in the header or on the sidebar, fixed or scrollable. The team also added some neat JS Masonry functionality to help create a perfectly fluid layout for the blog, portfolio and mini-feature modules.

Like the name suggests the theme is perfect for designers/shop owners/retailers wanting to showcase their merchandise in a clean design. Should you be expecting WooCommerce support for such a theme then wait till next week for the child theme with pixel perfect styling support. We need to give you something to look forward to right?
There truly is loads to this theme so check our the demo. As always let us know your thoughts, we always value your feedback and strive towards fulfilling as many of your requests as we possibly can.
Grab Merchant with a 12% discount coupon, valid until 19th April, 2012. Just use MERCHANT12 as your coupon code on checkout.
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Great work ! 🙂
But the typo is somewhat a problem (top menu in particular)
We are looking into the text rendering issue asap.
same issue on all of the text. Using Chrome browser. On firefox works fine
I guess it’s only on Chrome for Windows.
What you doing on Windows? 😉
Great theme, great design!
Finally one that isn’t WooCommerce, but WooThemes again 😉
I really, really love the ability to have a vertical menu, and not just a horizontal one. 99 % of the WP themes out there ships with a horizontal one, which I find irritating. Always wanted a vertical one, but takes a lot of hacking to replace a themes menu with another one. Hoping to see that option more often when it comes to your themes (as often as the design allows for it at least).
Only thing missing in your themes compared with shops like RocketTheme and YooTheme is more widgetized areas. That would give aftermarket designers and hobby-wooers like me even more ways to personalize their website. 🙂
Regards
Kristoffer
Nice theme but the typography is a disaster. Case in point: http://screencast.com/t/Sh49hbp7 (was like that on Firefox and Chrome)
Hi, thanks for pointing that out. It does seem to be only on Windows? Must be something with the font rendering there. Will have this sorted ASAP.
Its a disaster on my mac in safari & chrome.
Disaster for me, too. Firefox 11.0 on PC, Windows 7.
I am a bit dissapointed actually. Not with the theme itself, but your widget “tabs” looks just horrible here. Or at least it did when I watched it.
Otherwise it looks nice. I´d love to know how you have coded the timeline page. You can´t “update” the older themes with that type of timeline 🙂 It has always been one of the things I would love to learn how to code.
So nice work. Keep it up 🙂
Yay you modified the theme so that the tabs look marvelous!! Great job!
the theme is beautiful , but typography , is broken !!!
You do not dare even to criticize, because it is ignored anyway.
So I think the theme again very boring and the writing is hardly recognizable.
Next is probably a Woocommerce then right?
For ace designers like yourself, there’s a special link on the Woothemes website: http://woocommerce.com/submit-your-design/
By far the best theme that you have. Excellent work.
I really like this design and will get this one once the typography issue is resolved. Great work Woo Ninjas!
Overall great job!
However, the menu typography *does* look unacceptably chunky and hard to read, even on Safari 5.1.5 (Mac).
Screen shot: http://cl.ly/3c1E3e2Q3k1N2U331A3a
Perhaps the hidden intent is to get people to actually customize the theme beyond the default… XD
Thanks for all the feedback guys. 🙂
For those having font issues, we have determined that it is an issue with Windows font rendering and @font-face. If you take a look at this page – http://www.google.com/webfonts/specimen/Quicksand – (actual Google Fonts listing for the font) in Windows, you will see that the rendering is just as bad. (Screenshot – http://cl.ly/FmYm/o)
So we will need to swap the font out with a different one. We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused. The issue will be resolved within the next 24 hours.
Its cool bro! After you replace the fonts… this theme will be a 100% perfect 😀
Woocommerce support would be awesome. Nice theme by the way.
Awesome job guys! It is going to work great for my client.
Great work wooteam! I will be trying this theme next week and give some feedback on the way:)
This is one you might need to play with in the playground! It’s quite outstanding
Hi, guys, really awesome work, and something different, also.
I have some trouble, though… not with the font but when the post is to short… take a look to this: http://cl.ly/2R1n1b0V0f0u44093V0q
and
http://cl.ly/2c1r0v0h0L0G2z3K0l28
Congrats!
Alejandro, I recommend post this as a bug in the forums.
Cool. Love the vertical menu on the side.
This theme will work great with those clients with long logos that won’t fit in horizontal banners!
Thank woo
@WooThemes
It looks excellent! with responsive design. 🙂
Well done WooTeam!
excellent, been looking forward to this one, and it’s worth the wait.
One thing, is there a slider option for multi images in a portfolio section, instead of a long page full of single images?
No, not currently. We will look into adding this as possible option to the portfolio section in the future, as it has been requested before.
Another vote for the slider option in the portfolio, it really limits an otherwise awesome theme. Need it for Whitelight too 🙂
Don’t want to be an “i told you so” but i did mention the problem with quicksand on the teaser post 😉
Anyway – it looks like an absolutely awesome theme which i have been desperate to get my hands on, so i’ll be taking it for a spin soon.
Also looking forward to the woocommerce child – keep up the good work!
I missed that comment of yours on the teaser post 🙁 Wish I had seen it, would’ve saved me some trouble!
Theme has been updated with a different font now.
Glad to see you put a new font in – this was never an issue for me personally as i modify things anyway, but didn’t want you to release such a cool theme that was let-down by ugly type 🙂
I have been complaining for months about the lack of a commercial business theme, so I am VERY pleased to finally see one. I STILL want Woo Commerce to be put into a separate member ship and our prices reduced.
However, I am going to give this a go even if it lacks a lot of the flexible things I was asking for in a business theme.
I am going to test this for Local Optimization, it would be good if Woo did one specifically for local businesses, Woo can email me if you need the metrics.
Thanks for this, now we need some more!
Also you need to change the tags on the themes that show in your business category.
Hi all,
The font issue has been resolved. We opted to replace Quicksand with Muli (http://www.google.com/webfonts/specimen/Muli), which renders much better on Windows.
This update is available in Merchant 1.0.1
PS If you still see the old font on our demo, try clearing your browser cache 😉
Great ! MUCH better indeed 😉
🙂 Thanks!
In the demo, and in the instance I just set up, the portfolio items on the homepage just reload the page when clicked. I inspected the source in Chrome and Safari (on mac) and it looks like the href attribute on the portfolio item link is not being set.
Hi Wes, thanks for pointing that out. I have fixed that little bug and updated the theme to V1.0.2 🙂
Is a woocommerce child in the works?
I believe the woocommerce child is coming next week!
Great theme. Already using on a few in development client sites.
Could you let me know if you plan to build a Woocommerce child them? and if so, when? Im desperate for a products grid on the homepage, just above my latest portfolio items!
Nice theme but doesn’t work properly in Opera. The heading and features is broken.
I’m seeing the same issues in Opera.
Unfortunately Opera is not supported by us.
That’s a real pity and most of your other themes work fine in Opera.
Good thing most of my clients don’t use Opera. In fact its less than 1% of my website visitors which makes it nice 🙂 Keep up the great work guys. Your themes are always professional, clean, and my customers love them.
Thanks Casey 🙂
For those asking about the WooCommerce child theme, the second to last paragraph above states:
“Should you be expecting WooCommerce support for such a theme then wait till next week for the child theme with pixel perfect styling support.”
🙂
Cheers Cobus
I saw that the theme was another Cobus and skipped straight to the demo! 😀
Looking forward to this Thursday! 😉
Cobus, this theme beautiful like full width tutorial websites. Great work!
For the non-technical, widgetized homepages rock!
I just purchased a T103 tablet. When I go to Home > Menu > Settings > Language & Keyboard > Touch Calibration, there is no calibration option. How do I calibrate it?Why cant I play facebook games? I have already downloaded the firmware sucessfully.Thank You
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