The situation
A private wholesale operator selling exotic goods — plants, reptiles, fish, insects, and related supplies — was running the entire business manually. Orders came in through calls and emails, inventory lived in spreadsheets, buyers had no self-service, and agents had no system. Everything depended on someone picking up the phone. For a business with that many SKUs, that many buyer relationships, and that much operational complexity, running it by hand had become a real liability.
What I was brought in to do
I was brought in to deliver a production-ready B2B wholesale platform that was account-based, role-controlled, and equipped with proper inventory and order management.
What I built
I built a secure e-commerce platform designed specifically for wholesale rather than a retrofitted B2C store. It included buyer accounts with controlled access, agent roles that could place and manage orders on behalf of clients, a structured product catalog with real-time inventory, and a checkout and order-tracking system that handled the full transaction lifecycle.
The domain carried specific complexity, because exotic goods require careful handling of product information, availability, and buyer eligibility. I captured those requirements early through close work with the client and built them into the platform structure rather than bolting them on later.
QA and UAT cycles ran against real transaction scenarios before anything went live, since transactional accuracy was essential to how the platform worked.
The result
A wholesale operation that had run on phone calls and spreadsheets now had a platform buyers could use on their own and agents could manage efficiently, with orders, inventory, and buyer relationships in one place. It was delivered to production in five months with full documentation and no open issues at handover.