Pitch Shopify Theme Review: Merchandising First For Modern Catalogs
A FREE Shopify theme for brands that want flexible merchandising, group based layouts, and AI assisted content blocks in a clean, conversion oriented package.
Introduction
Pitch is a recent Shopify free theme that puts merchandising and layout control at the centre of its design. Instead of focusing only on basic grids and static sections, it introduces group blocks, AI assisted content generation, and updated product cards aimed at modern direct to consumer storefronts. The Pitch Shopify Theme gives you a solid, contemporary base that feels closer to a lightweight merchandising engine than a simple template. It is designed for merchants who think deeply about how products are discovered, presented, and upsold.
Where many older free themes feel generic, Pitch leans into structure that supports campaigns and ranges. You can highlight featured groups, try different collection layouts, and experiment with content inserted between product rows. Merchants appreciate how quickly they can build out new sections once they understand the group system and how AI blocks can accelerate early drafts of copy or layout ideas. When configured thoughtfully, the store feels smooth, modern, and ready for scaling.
As with other new generation themes, there are still rough spots. Reviews mention missing sticky add to cart options, limited collection layout settings, and requests for richer badges and discount displays. There are also a few reports about bugs in early versions, such as links not working in certain scenarios or layout quirks around navigation and thumbnails. The broader sentiment is that the Pitch Shopify Theme is promising and already very usable, but still has room for more merchandising niceties and small quality of life improvements.
Ideal For Niches With Supporting Features
Pitch works best for merchants who see their store as a place to actively merchandise, not just list products. It is comfortable with collections that change often, promotional ranges, and brands that like to experiment with messaging blocks near products. The table below shows how different niches can take advantage of Pitch’s structure so you can gauge whether it matches your plans.
| Niches | Supporting Features | Why They Matter? |
|---|---|---|
| Fashion and beauty brands | Flexible collection grids, group blocks, promotion friendly sections | Apparel and cosmetics teams often run frequent campaigns. Pitch helps them cluster products, insert banners, and test layouts that push key ranges. |
| Beverage and food brands | Space for feature content inside collections, modern product cards | Food and drink merchants can highlight bundles, flavour notes, or seasonal offers directly in collection views, keeping attention on buying choices. |
| Health, wellness, and supplements | Clean product templates, room for benefits blocks, recommendation support | These categories rely on explaining benefits and usage without overwhelming shoppers. Pitch gives structure for clear copy around a focused layout. |
| Lifestyle and homeware labels | Simple navigation, AI assisted copy blocks, configurable hero sections | Teams can quickly build new landing pages or category stories, then refine copy with AI tools and customised group layouts. |
| Growing direct to consumer brands | Modern design, support for recommended products, merchandising friendly sections | Brands that expect to scale benefit from a theme that can keep up with new ranges and bundles without needing complex custom coding. |
Presets
Pitch arrives with a default look that feels clean, contemporary, and slightly energetic, but it does not constrain you to a single aesthetic. You adjust fonts, colours, and spacing to match your brand while keeping the underlying structure focused on clarity. A bright, playful label can lean into bolder hues, larger headlines, and lively product photography. A more serious brand can soften colours and rely on a calmer type system while still using the same core layouts.
Because groups and sections are central in Pitch, presets matter less than your chosen layout patterns. You might decide that your homepage always tells a story that moves from hero to collection group to social proof, for example. Once that pattern is set, you can reuse it for seasonal campaigns with new content. The key is consistency: once you find a combination of hero, grid, and content sections that works for your audience, preserve that rhythm and avoid bouncing between wildly different layouts.
Key Features And Highlights
Pitch stands out most in how it helps you merchandise. It does not try to be the flashiest theme visually, but it brings a set of tools that make product presentation more strategic. The table below turns those tools into concrete advantages so you can picture how they might work in your own store.
| Features | What It Is And Why It Matters? |
|---|---|
| Group blocks for structured layouts | Groups let you cluster blocks into logical sets that can be reused and rearranged. This is ideal for building repeatable landing page patterns and campaign layouts. |
| AI assisted content blocks | AI blocks can generate draft copy inside the theme editor, which speeds up creating headings, descriptions, or snippets around product sections. You still stay in control of editing. |
| Flexible hero section | The hero supports strong imagery and focused calls to action, making it an effective anchor for launches or promotions. Merchants are requesting mobile specific images, which would improve this further. |
| Product cards tuned for modern catalogs | Product cards are designed for clarity, with clean pricing and badges. Some merchants want additional features like variant selectors, which would make them even stronger. |
| Recommended products integration | Pitch can display recommended products on templates, helping you raise average order value with logical upsells rather than random suggestions. |
| Collection grid options | While not exhaustive, the collection grid section offers size and layout controls that help you adapt to different catalog densities. |
| Navigation and menu structure | The theme includes a straightforward navigation system and basic mega menu styling. For many stores, this covers most needs without overwhelming setup. |
| Cart drawer and add to cart behaviour | Pitch includes a cart drawer and supports add to cart from product pages. Some merchants are asking for sticky add to cart behaviour to make mobile trials even smoother. |
| Updated theme blocks architecture | Being part of the new theme generation, Pitch gives you more precise block level control than older free themes. This lets you build more tailored sections without extra apps. |
Theme Experience!
From the shopper’s perspective, Pitch is meant to feel like a clear, modern storefront where key products and offers are easy to find. When merchants lean into its merchandising strength, customers see well structured pages that help them navigate, compare, and decide. The table below walks through that journey so you can imagine how visitors might experience your store with Pitch configured well.
| Experience Area | What Shoppers Feel In Practice? |
|---|---|
| Homepage visit | Shoppers land on a hero that clearly presents a main offer or story, followed by concise sections that highlight important collections or product groups. The store feels organised and purposeful. |
| Collection browsing | Collection pages look tidy and are easy to scan. Customers can move quickly through items without feeling lost in clutter, even if there is room for more control over card details. |
| Viewing product details | Product pages present images, pricing, and options in a straightforward way. Supporting content blocks explain benefits, routines, or ingredients without forcing long scrolls. |
| Adding items to cart | Add to cart actions give clear feedback, and the cart drawer makes it simple to check items before checkout. Shoppers feel that the store is built to help them complete a purchase. |
| Navigating menus and links | Menus are simple and understandable, although very long lists may require extra attention to avoid visual cutoffs. Shoppers still find core categories efficiently in most setups. |
| End to end mobile experience | On phones, layouts remain clean and legible, but the absence of mobile specific hero images can sometimes lead to awkward crops. With careful imagery, the journey can still feel smooth. |
Performance, Explained!
Performance feedback for Pitch is calmer than for some other new themes, but it still deserves attention. Most merchants describe it as a solid base that behaves predictably when they keep imagery reasonable and avoid stacking too many heavy sections. Where problems appear, they tend to come from edge cases such as specific menu configurations, third party widgets, or very long content blocks. That makes Pitch a good candidate if you want a modern feel without constantly fearing performance surprises.
To keep the Pitch Shopify Theme fast, the same fundamentals apply as with any serious storefront. Optimise your images before upload, choose a consistent aspect ratio for product photography, and keep the number of blocks above the first product row modest. Avoid loading multiple large videos above the fold unless they are critical to your value proposition. Check performance from locations and networks similar to your customers rather than relying only on lab scores.
Because Pitch leans on the newest theme architecture, you should also keep an eye on how AI blocks and groups behave after each update. New features can subtly change layout or loading behaviour, so keep a draft copy of your theme where you can test changes safely. When you notice friction or unexpected delays in interactive elements, trace back which new sections, scripts, or media went live at the same time. Fixing a few heavy choices often restores the smooth feeling you saw early in development.
Pricing
Pitch, like Savor and Trade, is part of Shopify’s free theme offering. You do not pay a license fee to install it, test it, or run it on your live storefront. This is especially attractive for brands that would rather direct budget toward high quality product photography, sampling, or acquisition channels instead of theme licenses. You can also experiment with larger layout changes without worrying about paying again for new versions.
For merchants who would otherwise invest in a premium merchandising focused theme, Pitch can meaningfully lower early stage costs. The tradeoff is again time and attention rather than money. You gain a sophisticated structure for free, but you must plan, configure, and test it properly. If your team is happy inside the theme editor and comfortable with concepts like groups and metafields, the value equation comes out strongly in your favour.
Stores Build with Pitch Shopify Theme
The real proof of Pitch appears in stores that treat it as a merchandising partner instead of just a template. Early adopters include wellness brands, cosmetics companies, and direct to consumer labels that run frequent promotions or bundles. These merchants tend to use group blocks heavily, structuring pages so that shoppers always see a clear set of next steps instead of endless undifferentiated grids. The result feels curated without being fussy.
When you explore Pitch powered stores, look at how they weave content into collection views. Some insert short banners, benefit callouts, or small story blocks between rows of products to keep attention and explain value. Pay attention to where they place reviews and guarantees and how they use badges to draw the eye toward new or discounted items. Also note how much they ask AI blocks to do; the strongest examples still rely on considered editing rather than letting generated copy stand untouched.
Examples of stores using the Pitch Shopify Theme include:
- MANIAVER
- divain America
- Skin by Ella Rose
- Brilliant Stone
- lovebasiq
- Flow Mineral Spring Water Canada
- Vivazen | Arena
- Private Packs
- Biz Strtga
- Lariette Cosmetics
Themes Similar to Pitch
Pitch belongs to a cluster of free themes that share modern layouts and updated theme block support but differ in focus and style. Comparing these neighbours can help you decide whether you want Pitch’s merchandising emphasis or a different flavour of flexibility.
| Shopify Theme | FREE or Paid? | Why is it Similar? |
|---|---|---|
| Savor | FREE | Savor is another new theme with powerful blocks and a minimal aesthetic. It suits brands that want a calmer presentation, with less explicit focus on merchandising tools. |
| Fabric | FREE | Fabric leans more editorial, with strong support for rich storytelling and galleries. It shares Pitch’s modern architecture but suits brands that need more visual drama. |
| Origin | FREE | Origin offers a balanced structure with good performance and straightforward layouts. It is a solid alternative if you want modern structure with fewer advanced options. |
| Sense | FREE | Sense is aimed at wellness and care brands, with gentle visuals and story friendly sections. It appeals to some of the same merchants who consider Pitch for wellness shops. |
| Dawn | FREE | Dawn remains the simple baseline for many merchants. It does not have Pitch’s merchandising depth, but it is widely understood and easy to maintain. |
Pros and Cons
Choosing Pitch means leaning into a theme designed for merchandising and modern layout control. That comes with clear advantages and a few tradeoffs that you should recognise before migrating your live store.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Free theme with merchandising friendly structure, group blocks, and AI assisted content tools. | Lacks some advanced touches such as built in sticky add to cart and deep control over collection grid column counts. |
| Modern design that feels current and smooth on both desktop and mobile when configured well. | Some areas, such as menus and hero image handling for mobile, still need more settings to satisfy demanding brands. |
| Strong base for campaign driven brands that regularly build landing pages and ranges. | Certain workflows, like variant selectors on product cards or richer badge systems, require either future updates or app based solutions. |
| Updated architecture that should age well as Shopify adds new theme features. | Merchants must invest time to learn groups and blocks properly, otherwise the editor can feel confusing at first. |
Our Rating
Pitch already feels strong for a free theme, particularly when viewed through a merchandising lens. Some missing features and quality of life items keep it from being a complete powerhouse, but the foundation is solid. The table below summarises how we rate it across key decision factors.
| Parameters | Our Ratings | Summary |
|---|---|---|
| Feature Depth | 4.2/5.0 | Pitch includes meaningful tools for merchandising, groups, AI blocks, and recommendations. It covers most needs for small and mid sized brands without requiring many extra apps. |
| Design and Customization | 4.3/5.0 | The visual style is modern and adaptable, with enough settings to express different brand tones. Some areas, such as menus and image handling, could still use more flexibility. |
| Performance | 4.0/5.0 | With sane media choices and limited scripts, Pitch performs well in everyday use. Problems tend to come from edge cases rather than structural issues. |
| Value for Money | 4.8/5.0 | As a free theme that feels close to a paid merchandising template, Pitch delivers excellent value, especially for teams that understand how to use its group system. |
| Support and Updates | 4.0/5.0 | Updates continue to refine behaviour and close gaps such as layout quirks and missing sections. Some requested features are still pending, so merchants should watch release notes. |
| Overall | 4.3/5.0 | Overall, the Pitch Shopify Theme is a very strong option for brands that think about merchandising strategy and want a modern base without buying a premium theme. |
User Reviews: What Merchants Say
Merchant feedback around the Pitch Shopify Theme is largely encouraging. Many reviewers say they love how customisable it feels compared to older free themes and enjoy the way groups help them organise content. They describe Pitch as a modern, smooth base that behaves like a premium theme in many respects. Several merchants specifically praise the new group options and the AI block writer, noting that it speeds up building pages and testing new ideas.
At the same time, users are not shy about pointing out gaps. Requests for sticky add to cart, mobile specific hero images, more flexible collection columns, and richer badging are common. Some merchants also note navigation quirks around long menus and confusion when AI generated blocks do not automatically inherit their chosen typography styles. A small number report bugs in specific setups, such as non clickable products or oversized thumbnails on certain devices, although these tend to be addressed in later updates.
Overall, the conversation reads as merchants seeing strong potential in Pitch and wanting it to go even further. They are using it in live stores, not just testing, and are pushing for refinements that would make it a serious long term contender even in comparison to paid themes. That is a good sign if you are considering investing your own time into it.
Our Verdict
If your brand lives on campaigns, bundles, and thoughtful merchandising, Pitch deserves a close look. It gives you a modern, flexible structure that lets you showcase products in context, experiment with groups, and weave content into shopping flows. For teams that enjoy fine tuning layout and storytelling, the Pitch Shopify Theme can feel like a creative toolkit rather than just a skin.
Our advice is to treat Pitch as a merchandising platform from day one. Plan your homepage and key collections around clear stories, then use groups and AI blocks to build layouts that move shoppers from interest to action. Test how menus, product cards, and recommendations behave on phones as carefully as on desktop, and keep a simple checklist for each update so nothing breaks unnoticed. If Pitch fits your way of working, it can carry you a long way without an upfront theme fee, and you can always layer on specialised apps later once you see where real shoppers need more help.
GET THE BEST APPS IN YOUR INBOX
Don't worry we don't spam
