Business development / vendor orchestration
From storefront to shop floor.
A wholesale cabinetry business launched in 2.5 months. The hard part was connecting the order system, vendors, and CNC manufacturing—then leaving the operation ready for the team to run.
From commitment to a working launch and handoff
01 / The challenge
A business to launch. A departure date already set.
Cabinet Parts To Go would sell custom cabinetry components to other cabinet businesses, putting manufacturing capacity to work between luxury installations. The CEO committed to the new division two and a half months before my international relocation.
I had advocated for wholesale expansion for years, but the specific B2B strategy was the CEO's. My role was to shape the technical and operational architecture, coordinate the vendors, and get the business ready to run without my day-to-day involvement.
The launch had to cover the entire path from a prospective customer's first visit to specifications arriving at the factory—and give the remaining team control of the operation after I left.
02 / The approach
Choose the system the team could actually run.
Our development partners were busy with the primary company's roadmap. A custom-built storefront would have taken too long and left content and product changes dependent on technical specialists. I selected Wix for the public-facing site so the CEO and manufacturing team could maintain it themselves.
Beyond the website, the enterprise management system (EMS) let business customers create accounts and specify components and measurements. Those specifications needed to reach the CNC machines without manual re-entry or calculation.
Then we discovered the EMS and existing CNC software were incompatible. The integration review also revealed that specialists were manually calculating measurements for existing orders—a bottleneck extending beyond the new division.
The biggest obstacle wasn't the website. It was making the order system and the factory speak the same language.
I brought the EMS vendor, CNC software vendor, and manufacturing specialists together around shared technical requirements and mutual commercial incentives. The vendors collaborated on a custom bridge. My role was the architecture and orchestration—not writing the integration code myself.
03 / Workflow
One order. Several connected systems.
A functional overview: the website introduced the offer, the EMS handled customer specifications, and a vendor-developed bridge connected the order data to CNC production.
Illustrative process map · Not a technical integration schematic or production system screenshot
04 / Design decisions
Build for launch. And for the people who would run it.
Three priorities shaped how the new division could become a working operation within the available time.
Make the storefront manageable.
Choose Wix so nontechnical staff could update the public site without waiting on the development team.
Solve the incompatibility.
Coordinate EMS and CNC vendors around a bridge that also removed manual measurement calculations in existing operations.
Leave ownership with the team.
Document workflows, transfer vendor relationships, and establish direct collaboration before relocating internationally.
05 / The outcome
Launched in 2.5 months. Running after I left.
In approximately 2.5 months, Cabinet Parts To Go reached an operational launch with customer accounts, automated manufacturing handoffs, and a new B2B revenue channel.
Months after my international relocation, the CEO confirmed the division was serving customers and manufacturing orders without needing my technical involvement.
The business was operating. The relationships and systems were now its own.
DELIVERY2.5 MONTHS
SCOPEB2B MVP
ORDER FLOWAUTOMATED
HANDOFFOPERATIONAL
STATUS: OPERATING AFTER HANDOFFMore selected work
Different problems.
Same curiosity.
Read more about the business and technical challenges I've worked through.