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Mitch McDevitt
Starting an ecommerce brand is hard. Starting one in a category where the rules change at every state line is a different challenge entirely. When NuBz came to MAK Digital, they had a quality product and big ambitions, but no website, no online presence, and no roadmap for selling a regulated nicotine product legally across the country. Four months later, they launched a premium, fully compliant store ready to sell direct to consumers and recruit wholesale dealers from day one.
Here’s a look at what went into it.
The Challenge: Compliance Before Design
For most stores, the hardest decisions are about layout and branding. For NuBz, the real challenge was selling a nicotine product legally in a market where nearly every state has its own rules. Ship a flavored pouch to a state that bans it, or let a minor reach the storefront, and a brand-new company faces serious legal and financial risk before it ever gets going.
NuBz had no existing systems to lean on, so every safeguard had to be built into the store from the start, and it all had to happen without making the site feel like a wall of legal disclaimers.
The Solution: A Premium Brand With Compliance Built In
We designed and developed NuBz from the ground up on BigCommerce, treating premium presentation and airtight compliance as equal priorities. A clean, whitespace-driven design positions NuBz as a credible competitor in a crowded category, while a layer of automated safeguards keeps the brand selling safely behind the scenes:
- Custom shipping restrictions that automatically block flavored pouches from banned states and stop all sales to Alaska and Washington, D.C.
- An age verification gate and a persistent nicotine warning, plus FDA and Prop 65 compliance
- A direct-to-consumer storefront with subscribe-and-save, paired with a wholesale application and store locator to open the retail channel from day one
The Result
NuBz went from no online presence to a polished, scalable storefront that looks the part of an established brand and operates with confidence. Every order respects the rules automatically, the wholesale channel brings in dealer leads without anyone chasing them, and the BigCommerce foundation gives NuBz room to add flavors, strengths, and retailers without another ground-up build.
See the Full Story
Want the complete breakdown of how we launched NuBz, from compliance to design to dual sales channels? Read the full case study.
