03 — Case file
DTC stationery retailer
Excel to custom backend, end to end.
Eleven years running the business on spreadsheets. Two weeks later: a custom B2B portal, stockist and supplier CRMs, automated inventory, and a single source of truth behind it all.
A DTC stationery retailer had run their whole operation on Excel and Word for over a decade. CRM, marketing, orders, inventory, invoices, all manual. We built a custom end-to-end backend in two weeks: Airtable as the headless database, Shopify sync, a B2B ordering portal, stockist and supplier CRMs, and automated reorder logic behind it all.
02 — Brief
Situation
Eleven years running a DTC stationery business on Excel and Word. Customer data, stockist contacts, supplier records, orders, invoices, marketing lists, inventory, all in spreadsheets and documents. Every B2B order came in as an email and had to be manually entered, priced, shipped, and invoiced. The founder spent the working day moving data between files.
Brief
Replace the spreadsheets with a custom system that handles the whole operation. B2B ordering, stockist outreach, supplier management, inventory tracking, and automation end to end. Not a SaaS stack. Not Excel with a coat of paint. Software that actually fits the business.
Not doing
Not replacing Shopify. Not rebuilding the retail side. Not an ERP rollout. A focused backend covering B2B orders, CRM, and inventory, purpose-built for how this founder actually runs the business.
03 — Engagement
What we built, and how it came together.
headless DB, Shopify sync, B2B portal, stockist CRM, supplier CRM, reorder automation.
Timeline
Data foundation
Airtable set up as the headless database. Synced with Shopify so retail orders and products flow in automatically. One source of truth for everything else to build on.
B2B ordering portal
Custom Next.js portal for B2B clients. Product search, MOQ rules, free-shipping incentives, automated shipping and packing calculation, and auto-populated emails to the warehouse and invoices to the customer. The manual order email is gone.
CRM layer
Stockist CRM covering outreach, stock levels, order cadence, and last-contacted dates. Supplier CRM tracking print quality, orders, and reorder cadence.
Inventory automation
Automated reorder alerts based on stock levels and average monthly order quantity. PO generation per supplier with visibility into what else is running low from the same supplier, so the team can benefit from bulk discounts.
04 — Outcome
What changed.
The business runs end to end on a system that actually fits it. The B2B side takes orders through a custom portal and processes them automatically. Stockists and suppliers are tracked in one place with visibility the founder never had in the spreadsheets. Reorder alerts, POs, and bulk-discount opportunities surface themselves. The founder runs the business instead of moving data between files.
“It’s the first time I’ve trusted the data in my own business.”
Founder
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