printkul
An online catalog for a print shop that had never had one
Client
Mintleaf Design & Print (Printkul), Kashmir
Role
Full-Stack Developer
Timeline
1 week
Platform
Next.js · Supabase ·
Built the first real online storefront for a print business operating since 2016 — replacing a template site with a proper product catalog, custom admin panel, and order pipeline, deliberately without a payment gateway.
The gap wasn't traffic. It was credibility and browsability. A customer couldn't see the catalog, couldn't see pricing at a glance, couldn't self-serve a quote — every interaction started from zero, in person or over a phone call, regardless of how simple the order.
The constraint that shaped the whole build: the client didn't want a payment gateway. Orders in this business are rarely a fixed SKU at a fixed price — wedding cards get customized, quantities get negotiated, print stock and finish get discussed. A generic "add to cart, pay online" flow would have fought the way the business actually closes orders. WhatsApp was already how customers reached them. The brief was to build real e-commerce architecture — catalog, cart, admin — and route the conversion through WhatsApp instead of a payment page.
A full product catalog, structured across [12+] categories, each with its own pricing logic — per piece, per 100, per 1000, depending on the product. Wedding cards, mugs, banners, and flyers all needed different pricing shapes, not one generic price field.
Customers browse, configure a product, and build a cart exactly like a standard e-commerce flow — right up until checkout. At that point the cart compiles into a formatted order summary and hands off to WhatsApp, pre-filled, so the conversation the business already knew how to have starts with full context instead of "hi, what do you need?"
A dedicated admin panel lets non-technical staff manage the catalog — add products, adjust pricing, update stock categories — without touching code or calling me for every price change.
50+
PRODUCTS
organized across 12+ categories and fully client-editable.
3 DAYS
→INSTANT
time required to publish a new product listing.
200+
MONTHLY
qualified inquiries generated through the website.
6+
ORGANIZATIONS
showcased as trusted clients, adding social proof that didn't exist before.
The parts that required judgment, not just implementation.
No payment gateway — by design, not by limitation. The easy version of this project bolts on Razorpay or Stripe and calls it done. The right version asked what actually closes a sale here — and the answer was a phone conversation, because pricing on custom print work is negotiated, not fixed. Building a full cart and catalog experience that terminates in a pre-filled WhatsApp message, instead of a payment form, kept the business's real sales process intact while still giving customers a proper way to browse and configure before they ever have to talk to someone.
Variable pricing models per category, not one product schema. A generic "price per unit" field breaks the moment you have wedding cards priced per 100 pieces sitting next to metal pens priced per piece. The catalog was structured so pricing shape is a property of the category, not a hardcoded assumption — which meant the admin panel didn't need special-casing every time a new product type got added.
An admin panel built for a print shop owner, not a developer. The catalog changes constantly — new seasonal products, wedding season pricing, one-off client deals. If every change required a pull request, the site would go stale within a month. The admin panel was scoped around what the business actually needed to touch day to day: products, pricing, categories — not a general-purpose CMS with a learning curve.
