Premium Brand Showcase — 2026
Kaloka Craft
Role
Front-End Developer
Stack
A premium brand site for a bespoke teak furniture maker, built around fluid GSAP animations, an Apple-style interactive gallery, and a custom order flow that feels as considered as the product itself.
01 / The Narrative
Kaloka Craft needed a site that felt as premium as the furniture they make by hand. I built a visually heavy, interaction-rich landing page with layout stability treated as a first-class concern, centered on a custom image accordion gallery running on Next.js and pure CSS flexbox transitions. GSAP handles the scroll-driven reveals, so the whole page feels immersive without ever feeling heavy.
The Challenge
High-res product images and complex hover states don't mix well in Next.js by default. Letting React manage the accordion's state caused visible flickering (FOUC) and blurry images mid-transition, exactly the kind of rough edge that undercuts a premium brand in the first three seconds a visitor spends on the page.
The Solution
I pulled animation logic out of React entirely, running it through GSAP contexts and pure CSS transitions instead. Next.js Image components were locked to static max-viewport sizes to force early high-res caching, which killed the blur completely and kept every transition smooth without inflating load time.
02 / Impact & Highlights
Result
The result reads as polished rather than merely functional, which matters for a brand selling on craftsmanship. The step-by-step order modal also gave potential clients a clear, low-friction path from browsing to actually requesting a custom piece.
Technical Highlights
- 01Apple-inspired interactive image accordion with auto-play and progress indicators
- 02GSAP ScrollTrigger animations tuned to avoid conflicts with React re-renders
- 03Custom smooth-scroll navigation that keeps URLs clean, no stray hash fragments
- 04Responsive, mobile-first showcase with a guided custom order timeline