About the project
The Greetings Card Company has been selling greeting cards online since 1997, predating every major competitor in the market. Nearly 30 years of continuous online trading has built significant SEO authority, with the site still ranking in the top 10 for common searches like "birthday cards."
Over those years, an in-house team of two developers had built a platform that worked exactly how the business worked. Custom SKU naming conventions that told warehouse staff where products lived, what type of card it was and who published it. The platform was 30% website, 70% operations. When it needed replacing, the new system had to understand all of that.
The Challenge
Three agencies had already tried to replace the GCC platform and failed. The problem wasn't technical ability. It was understanding that this wasn't an e-commerce site with a nice design on top. It was the system that ran the entire business.
GCC sells four distinct product types: everyday cards dispatched from warehouse stock, handwritten cards produced to order and sent directly to recipients, personalised cards printed in bulk (primarily for businesses), and charity cards where the majority of the sale goes to the partner charity. Any order can also include a customer donation to a charity of their choice.
The complexity is in what happens after checkout. A single order containing a mix of these products needs to be split across separate fulfilment paths, each with its own stages, its own dependencies and its own dispatch process. If some items are in stock and others need ordering from a supplier, even a single product type gets split further. Every combination has to route correctly, every time, without manual intervention.
Three agencies looked at this and saw an e-commerce site, we looked in detail and found a platform required to support business operations.
"Adam and his team delivered what three other companies had failed to do"
- Will Ruffman, Director & Founder
What we built
The platform spans everything from the customer-facing storefront to supplier management and financial reporting. All running on a single Umbraco instance.
E-Commerce Platform
A fully responsive online store supporting multiple checkout flows for B2C and B2B customers, with Stripe, PayPal and invoice payment options. Product management handles pricing, scaling prices for bulk orders, multiple images, card sizes and weight details for calculating optimal shipping costs.
Card Personaliser
A self-service design tool that lets customers personalise cards with their own images, text, font styles and colours. The personaliser generates print-ready PDFs at correct sizing, routed directly into the personalised order processing swimlane.
Order Processing
Multi-path order fulfilment with separate swimlanes for everyday, handwritten, personalised, design and sample orders. Each swimlane has its own stages from new order through to dispatch. Orders are automatically split across swimlanes based on their contents, with Royal Mail Business Account integration for label printing and dispatch.
Stock & Supplier Management
Real-time stock tracking with burn rate monitoring that factors in individual supplier delivery lead times. The system suggests purchase orders based on current stock levels and sales velocity, then sends POs directly to suppliers. No manual stock checks, no guesswork on reordering.
Understanding the operations first
The reason three agencies failed before us wasn't design or development skill. It was not understanding the business. We spent time learning how greeting card stock works, how SKU conventions encode warehouse locations and card types, how charity royalties are calculated, how seasonal demand creates purchasing pressure, and how personalisation affects fulfilment routing. Only once we understood the operations did we design the system to support them.
One platform, not five systems
Everything runs on Umbraco. The storefront, the personaliser, the order processing, the stock management, the supplier purchasing, the charity management, the reporting. No separate systems bolted together, no data syncing between platforms. One codebase, one database. That's what makes the operational logic possible and what makes the platform maintainable. It's also what allowed us to build the advanced query reporting system that lets GCC create custom reports across any area of the business.
Beyond the storefront
Charity Management
Onboarding charity partners, configuring donation percentages, calculating payouts. GCC supports both per-card charity ranges and optional customer donations at checkout.
Reporting & Analytics
Advanced reporting for accounting and business intelligence. A custom query report builder lets GCC create their own reports on any area of the system, from customer spending patterns to stock performance to seasonal trends.
Marketing & Integration
Mandrill and Mailchimp integration for transactional and marketing emails. Google Shopping integration for product feed management. A voucher system for campaigns and discounts. Seasonal landing page functionality for events like Mother's Day and Christmas.
The result
The platform launched successfully and handled the full complexity of the GCC business. Every product type, every order processing path, every supplier workflow, every charity payout calculation. What two other agencies couldn't deliver, we built as a single integrated platform on Umbraco.
The timing proved critical. When the pandemic shifted consumer behaviour online, GCC had a platform capable of handling the surge. The business saw significant revenue growth during the Covid years, supported by a system that could scale with demand without operational bottlenecks.
3x
Revenue Growth during Covid Period
1
Platform, Storefront to supplier POs in one system
8
Years of ongoing collaboration
"They went beyond to understand the complexity of our project, ensuring accurate and quality outcomes"
- Will Ruffman, Director & Founder
Related content
Got a platform that's more than a website?
We build systems that run businesses, not just storefronts. Tell us what you need.
Reach out directly:
