From no website to 5,000 products that run themselves

The starting point

Profilbutiken is a Swedish company that sells promotional products, meaning products with the customer’s logo on them. In 2013 they had no web presence at all. The range was there at the suppliers, the customers were out there, but there was nowhere for the two to meet.

What I built

We didn’t start with a store. We started with an image. The first step was a tool where customers upload their logo and see it placed on the products, right on the page. It sounds like a detail, but it’s often where the sale is decided. Once you see your own brand on the mug and the jacket, you’ve already started picturing the order.

From there it grew, step by step, into a full online store with more than 5,000 products.

The biggest win sits behind the scenes, though. Nobody types in thousands of products with images, colors and prices. Every supplier is connected through their product data, so going from finding a product at a supplier to having it live in the store takes about thirty seconds.

The store is also connected to Fortnox, the accounting system the company runs on. Customers, order flow and invoicing are handled automatically, so an order in the store never has to be typed in again somewhere else.

The result

Online sales have gone up clearly, and day-to-day product and order handling has become dramatically simpler. Products and orders that would otherwise be handled by hand now run automatically, which is what automation is really about.

The store has been live for more than thirteen years and is still being developed. That makes it the longest collaboration I have. It’s about the best review I can get: a system that doesn’t get replaced after a few years, but keeps growing with the business.