Wholesale Ordering System for Beauty Salons
An ordering system for a wholesaler serving beauty salons in Japan. Salons order online at their own prices, while shipping instructions to the warehouse and manufacturers and month-end invoices are fully automated.
Wholesale to salons is more complex than a typical online store
Off-the-shelf e-commerce platforms couldn't handle the way this business works with its customers. Every customer has its own rules, and every order can pass through several parties.
All operations lived in Excel files
The product catalog, price lists, customer list and order book were all managed in Excel. Each file was owned by one person, data was duplicated across files, it was hard to tell which version was current, and every change to a price or customer detail had to be edited by hand in several places.
A price list for every customer
Selling prices are calculated from a rate specific to each legal entity and each product, on top of promotions that apply only to certain customers.
One order, many ship-from points
Items stocked in the company warehouse and items shipped directly by manufacturers sit in the same order. Staff had to split orders and notify each party.
Invoices on each customer's own closing date
Each customer closes its books on a different day, with its own discounts and its own rules about who may see the invoice.
Management lacked numbers
Revenue, gross profit, declining customers and progress against targets were only available after manual aggregation.
How day-to-day work changed
| Before | With the new system | |
|---|---|---|
| Data management | Products, prices, customers and orders spread across many separate Excel files. One change meant updating several files, and numbers easily drifted apart. | One shared database for the whole company. Edit once and every screen and report follows. Bulk Excel/CSV import and export are still available when needed. |
| Taking orders | Salons phoned, faxed, emailed or messaged on LINE. Orders were scattered across channels, and staff re-keyed each one and looked up each customer's price, so things were easily missed or mistaken. | Every order in one place: salons order on the web themselves, 24/7. Prices, promotions, 8%/10% consumption tax and shipping fees are calculated automatically. |
| Shipping | Separate slips prepared for the warehouse and each manufacturer, sent by hand. | Select orders and click send. The system creates PDF and Excel slips and emails them to the right person in charge. |
| Shipping notices | Calling or emailing each salon with its tracking number. | Enter tracking numbers once (in bulk). Salons get an email and can see it right away in their order history. |
| Invoicing | At month-end, gathering each customer's orders, calculating discounts, exporting files and sending them out. | Invoices are generated automatically on each customer's closing date. Accounting just confirms; salons download the PDF. |
| Reporting | Excel roll-ups when needed; numbers were late and hard to compare. | Dashboards for year-over-year revenue, gross profit, customer ranking and KPI alerts. |
Every user gets exactly the tools they need
Salons
Salon owners, store managers, staff- Catalog with customer-specific prices, filterable by category, brand and manufacturer
- Favorites, recently viewed items and promotion suggestions
- Split the cart into salon purchases and personal purchases
- Reminders like "add ¥X more for free shipping"
- Reorder past orders, track deliveries, download PDF invoices
Office
Full-time and part-time staff- Manage products, stock and customers; bulk import/export via CSV/Excel
- Set customer-specific prices and adjust them in bulk
- 3 promotion types: bundles, buy X get Y, volume discounts
- Create orders on behalf of customers; bulk price edits with preview
- Send bulk notices and emails to salons
Warehouse and manufacturers
Company warehouse, manufacturer-side contacts- Receive shipping instruction slips as PDF
- Manufacturers also receive purchase orders as Excel
- Prices can be hidden on slips sent to the shipping party
Accounting
In-house accountants, tax accountants- Auto-generated invoices, confirmed in bulk
- Payment status tracking: unpaid, paid, overpaid, underpaid
- Invoice change history; tax-accountant accounts see only the invoice section
Management
Executives, managers- Monthly revenue and gross profit, compared with the same period last year
- Customer ranking; flags customers who haven't ordered in 60 days or have dropped sharply
- KPI targets with alerts when progress falls behind
- Purchase costs and profit visible only to authorized users
A system that grows with the business
Discovery, planning and requirements specification
Worked with each department to understand the existing order intake, pricing, shipping and invoicing processes. Agreed on scope, roadmap and the requirements specification.
Development and go-live
Salon ordering portal, product management, customer-specific pricing, promotions, orders, shipping instructions and automatic invoicing.
Operational support and feature expansion
Day-to-day operational support plus new development with each new round of client requirements:
- Bulk Excel/CSV import and export; personal orders for salon staff; rules on who may view invoices
- Customer groups with consolidated invoices; dashboards and revenue statistics
- Failed-email monitoring and automatic resend; internal bulletin board; permissions for viewing purchase costs
- Business analytics: gross profit, customer ranking, target-based KPIs (in progress)
What the client gets beyond the software
We understand Japanese wholesale
Closing dates, price rates, the 8% reduced tax rate, invoice formats for each customer type. We work in the client's own terminology.
Analysis before code
Every major feature comes with a data and formula analysis document, confirmed with the client in a meeting before implementation.
A long-term partner
We keep an operations team providing continuous support after go-live, while developing new features as the client's business needs evolve.
Data that stays correct over time
Orders and invoices store a snapshot of information at the time they occur, with soft deletion and change logs. Historical figures never go wrong when prices or customer details change.
Fine-grained permissions
5 internal roles, 2 account levels on the customer side, and a separate permission for viewing purchase costs.
Mainstream tech, easy to take over
Ruby on Rails, React, Next.js, MySQL, AWS S3. Automated tests and Swagger API documentation included.
Businesses facing a similar challenge
This solution suits B2B wholesale businesses with customer-specific pricing, shipments from multiple sources and periodic invoicing.
Still managing wholesale orders with Excel and email?
Our first conversation focuses on your current processes, not a software demo. Afterwards, you receive:
- A map of your current ordering, shipping and invoicing process
- A list of automation opportunities, ranked by impact
- A proposed phase-1 scope and expansion roadmap