Jackalope Mobile App - A Production Mobile Platform for a Global Action Sports Community

Introduction

Jackalope is one of the most recognizable action sports and lifestyle brands in North America, built around festivals, athletes, media, and culture. Its audience does not engage with the brand in just one way. Some come for the events. Some come for the content. Some come for the merchandise. Some come for the membership ecosystem behind it all.

Phico partnered with Jackalope to design and build a mobile product that unifies that entire experience into a single platform. Jackalope Mobile gives fans a direct branded channel for discovering festivals, following content, watching video, shopping merchandise, managing membership, and accessing account features that would otherwise be scattered across websites, social platforms, and commerce flows.

We approached the project as more than a content app or a storefront. We treated it as a production mobile platform that had to support media, commerce, entitlements, and operational flexibility from day one.

Services: Product Design, Mobile Development, Backend Integration, Shopify Architecture
Stack: React Native, Expo, Expo Router, Shopify, AdonisJS, TypeScript
Platforms: iOS, Android
Status: Live in production on the App Store and Google Play

The Challenge

Before the app, the Jackalope ecosystem was spread across multiple digital surfaces. Content lived in one place, commerce in another, and member-specific value had to be layered across disconnected systems.

The product needed to solve several problems at once:

• Create a single mobile destination for Jackalope's audience
• Support a membership model with gated content and tier-based benefits
• Make festival content and event-related experiences feel native and current
• Bring merchandise and checkout into a smoother mobile flow
• Preserve brand energy without sacrificing clarity or performance
• Keep the content and commerce stack manageable for the client team over time

The solution also had to avoid unnecessary system sprawl. It needed to be flexible enough to grow, but focused enough to ship.

The Solution

Jackalope Mobile is a cross-platform iOS and Android application that combines five major product surfaces into one experience:

• A content-rich home and discovery hub
• A festivals section with event detail, schedules, athletes, and related experiences
• A watch area for public and member-only video content
• A native storefront powered by Shopify
• An account and membership layer tied to customer identity and benefits

The app is now live in production on both the App Store and Google Play.

We used Shopify as the operational backbone for commerce, content, structured data, and customer-linked entitlements. That gave the project a strong foundation without forcing everything into a custom backend. Where the product requirements went beyond Shopify's standard behavior, we added a lightweight integration API to bridge the gaps cleanly.

What the App Does

Home and Discovery

The app opens into a discovery-first home experience that brings together Jackalope's latest content and commercial surfaces in one place. Users can browse hero content, latest news, festivals, experiences, video, merch, and membership calls to action from a single living front door for the brand.

Home and discovery experience combining content, merch, and membership surfaces

Festivals and Experiences

The festivals section is one of the most substantial parts of the product. Users can explore event-specific pages with hero media, timing and countdowns, descriptions, schedule blocks, featured athletes, rankings, FAQs, hotels, sponsors, maps, livestream links, announcements, and related purchasable experiences.

Athlete profiles are also part of the experience, with dedicated pages featuring profile information, imagery, social links, and related content. This turns the app into a year-round event companion rather than a simple schedule viewer.

Festival detail experience with schedules, content, and event-linked experiences

Watch and Editorial Content

Jackalope Mobile gives the brand a dedicated mobile hub for both video and editorial content. Users can browse public and gated video, filter content, and open embedded viewing experiences directly in the app. Articles support rich rendering, embedded media, and membership gating, giving Jackalope a flexible publishing channel for news, announcements, and premium storytelling.

This creates a clearer link between content strategy and membership value while allowing the client team to evolve content without requiring constant app releases.

Watch experience with public and member-only content

Shop and Checkout

The shop is a native mobile storefront built around Shopify. Users can browse merchandise, filter catalog views, open detailed product pages, select variants, add items to cart, see sale pricing, see membership-based discount pricing, and complete checkout in a native-feeling flow.

We kept the shopping experience tightly integrated with Shopify rather than building a custom commerce layer. That gave the product a more reliable operational foundation and reduced unnecessary system complexity.

Native storefront and checkout flow with context-aware pricing and member benefits

Membership and Account

Membership is not a side feature. It is a central product layer.

Users can browse membership tiers, read benefit descriptions, subscribe or upgrade, access gated content, receive membership-based discounts, manage account details, review orders, open a member QR code, and adjust profile settings such as country, language, and theme preference. The account layer also supports profile photos and social links, making the app feel more like a living customer product than a one-way content channel.

Membership structure with tier benefits, access control, and account-linked perks

Account experience tying customer identity, membership, and settings together

Product Highlights

A Unified Brand Experience
Jackalope Mobile brings together content, commerce, festivals, and membership into one product instead of forcing users through fragmented web journeys.

A Real Membership System
Membership influences both what users can access and what they pay. It is woven into content access, shopping logic, and customer identity.

Festival Depth
The app supports a much deeper festival experience than a standard event app, including schedules, announcements, athlete visibility, rankings, and experience-linked commerce.

Global Readiness
The product supports multiple languages and country-aware commerce behavior, including country-specific pricing context.

Operational Flexibility
Much of the product structure is driven from Shopify, allowing the Jackalope team to evolve content and commerce without turning every update into an engineering task.

Technical Foundation

Jackalope Mobile is built with a modern cross-platform stack designed for long-term maintainability and fast iteration.

Mobile Stack

• React Native
• Expo and Expo Router
• TypeScript
• Zustand for local persisted state
• React Query for server state and caching
• Shopify Checkout Sheet Kit for commerce checkout
• Expo Notifications for push delivery

The mobile app uses Shopify as the primary backend for product catalog and cart data, membership-linked commerce logic, articles and video content, structured content through metaobjects, and customer-linked data access. We intentionally leaned on Shopify as the system of record wherever it made sense. That let us move faster while keeping the client's content and commerce operations centralized.

Custom Backend API

A lightweight integration API extends the app where custom behavior is needed. The API is built with AdonisJS and TypeScript and exposes a JSON HTTP surface for selected content access, customer app data management, and push notifications.

It currently handles customer validation through Shopify bearer tokens, Expo push token registration and cleanup, customer metafield updates, profile photo processing and upload, and a scheduler-triggered notification job that reads customer tokens, fetches recent Shopify content, sends push notifications, and prevents duplicate sends.

The integration layer connects to Shopify Admin GraphQL, Shopify Customer Account GraphQL, Firebase Admin / Firestore, Expo Server SDK, Google Cloud Storage, and Google Cloud Scheduler. Operationally, the backend runs as a stateless Google Cloud Run service with deploy-time secrets and identity-protected scheduled execution.

We kept the backend narrow on purpose. Instead of introducing a full application database and a heavy domain layer, we let Shopify and Firestore handle the persistent state that genuinely needed to exist. That decision kept the system more maintainable and more aligned with the product's actual needs.

Content, Commerce, and Membership Working Together

One of the most important parts of this project is how the product layers reinforce each other.

Content drives discovery.

Festivals create ongoing reasons to engage.

Membership adds differentiated value.

Commerce monetizes intent without feeling bolted on.

The product is strongest not because each part exists separately, but because those parts now work together inside a single customer journey. A user can move from content to membership, from membership to shopping, from festivals to experiences, or from account to order tracking without feeling like they have left the product.

Design and UX Approach

Jackalope has a strong visual identity, so the app needed to feel energetic and premium without turning into noise. The product uses immersive media, bold layout choices, and polished native interactions while staying readable and task-oriented.

We made deliberate choices around native feel, responsive media handling, and platform-specific polish so the app feels modern on both iOS and Android while remaining efficient to operate and maintain.

Production Status

Jackalope Mobile is live in production on the App Store and Google Play and is being used by real customers as the public rollout expands.

The current state of the product reflects a shipped platform rather than a prototype. Core content, festivals, commerce, account management, membership logic, and notification infrastructure are in place and working together as part of the live experience.

The rollout is intentionally gradual, which creates room for refinement, observation, and continued evolution without compromising the product's long-term direction.

Why This Project Matters

For Jackalope, the app creates a direct owned mobile product around the brand itself rather than relying only on external platforms and disconnected web touchpoints. It reduces fragmentation across content, commerce, and membership while creating a stronger foundation for recurring engagement around festivals and premium content.

For Phico, this project is a strong example of how we build real production systems around complex brand ecosystems. It demonstrates how content, commerce, membership, and event-driven engagement can be brought into one product without unnecessary platform sprawl.

If you are building a mobile product that needs to unify media, membership, operations, and commerce, this project shows the kind of architecture and execution we specialize in.