Building Golden Leaf Knots: From Instagram Store to a Full Ecommerce Platform
How I transformed a handmade gifting business from Instagram-based sales into a production-ready ecommerce platform.
By Uttam Thapa · · Case Study
🎯 Introduction
Golden Leaf Knots started as a handmade crochet and personalized gifting business operated through Instagram, WhatsApp, and direct customer interactions.
📌 What This Case Study Covers: From manual Instagram orders → fully automated ecommerce platform, payment integration, inventory management, and production deployment.
While the products were unique and beautifully handcrafted, the ordering process relied heavily on manual communication. Customers needed to message for product details, confirm availability, share shipping information manually, and complete payment verification through multiple conversations.
I wanted to solve this by creating a complete ecommerce platform that would automate the entire customer journey while preserving the handmade and premium identity of the brand.
📋 Project Overview
🏗️
Project Type
Full Stack Ecommerce
👤
Client
Shruti Adawade
🎨
Industry
Handmade Crochet & Gifts
⚡
Role
Full Stack Developer
⚠️ The Problem
Before the website was built, the business primarily operated through Instagram and WhatsApp – a common but inefficient model for growing businesses.
😞
Customer Problems
- • Manually request product information
- • Multiple conversations for order collection
- • Manual payment verification process
- • Difficult product discovery
🏢
Business Problems
- • Manual order management overwhelming
- • Difficult inventory tracking
- • Limited product discovery
- • No automated payment verification
📈 The Challenge: As the business grew, manual processes became increasingly difficult to manage efficiently. The solution needed to scale with the business.
📐 Planning the Platform
The objective was to build a production-ready ecommerce platform that would simplify both the customer experience and business operations.
📦
Product Catalog
🔍
Product Details
🛒
Shopping Cart
✅
Checkout Workflow
💳
Online Payments
📋
Order Management
📊
Inventory Control
📱
Mobile Responsive
🏗️ System Architecture
🖥️ React Frontend (Vercel)
⬇️
⚙️ Express Backend (Render)
⬇️
🗄️ PostgreSQL Database
⬇️
🖼️ Cloudinary | 💳 Razorpay
↑ Clean separation of concerns: Frontend → Backend → Database → External Services
⚙️ Complete Tech Stack
🎨 Frontend
- • React 18
- • TypeScript
- • Vite
- • Tailwind CSS
⚙️ Backend
- • Node.js
- • Express.js
- • Prisma ORM
🗄️ Database
🚀 Deployment
- • Vercel (Frontend)
- • Render (Backend)
- • Cloudinary (Images)
🎨 Frontend Development
The frontend was built using React, TypeScript, Vite, and Tailwind CSS with a focus on elegance and performance.
✨ Design Philosophy: The goal was to create an elegant experience that reflected the handmade, premium nature of the products – with a luxury-inspired color palette and product-focused layouts.
- Mobile-first responsive design
- Fast navigation and page transitions
- Product-focused layouts with large imagery
- Smooth checkout experience with progress indicators
- Accessibility considerations throughout
🔧 Backend Development
The backend was developed using Node.js, Express.js, PostgreSQL, and Prisma ORM with a clean REST API architecture.
// API Structure
GET /api/products → List all products
GET /api/products/:id → Get single product
POST /api/orders → Create new order
POST /api/payments → Initialize payment
POST /api/contact → Submit contact form
POST /api/newsletter → Subscribe
POST /api/admin/login → Admin authentication
Core backend responsibilities included:
- Product catalog management
- Order processing and tracking
- Secure payment processing
- Real-time inventory updates
- Automated email notifications
- Administrative dashboard operations
💳 Razorpay Payment Integration
🔐 Complete Payment Flow
- 1. User proceeds to checkout → Create payment session
- 2. Server generates Razorpay order with amount
- 3. Order ID returned to frontend → Payment modal opens
- 4. User completes payment → Razorpay webhook triggered
- 5. Server verifies HMAC SHA256 signature
- 6. Order record created → Inventory updated
- 7. Confirmation emails sent to customer and admin
✅ Security Note: All payment verification occurs on the backend to prevent tampering and fraudulent requests. No payment logic runs on the client side.
📦 Inventory Management
Because many crochet products are handmade and available in limited quantities, inventory consistency was extremely important.
🔄 Key Decision: Stock updates occur only after successful payment verification – not during checkout – to prevent overselling and race conditions.
Additional inventory features included:
- Automatic stock reduction on successful orders
- Admin interface for inventory updates
- Low stock notifications
- Product variant management
📧 Email Automation
Automated email workflows were introduced for both customers and administrators.
📨 Order Confirmation
Sent immediately after successful payment
✅ Payment Success
Verification and receipt
🔔 New Order Alert
Admin notification for each order
📊 Admin Summary
Daily/weekly order summaries
⚠️ Major Challenges & Solutions
🔐
Razorpay Verification
Problem: Webhook signature validation failing intermittently.
Solution: Fixed raw body parsing and implemented proper signature verification using official Razorpay Node SDK.
🔄
Inventory Sync Issues
Problem: Stock showing as available after being sold out.
Solution: Moved inventory updates to webhook handler and added database transactions for consistency.
📱
Mobile Responsiveness
Problem: Product images and checkout not optimized for mobile.
Solution: Complete redesign with mobile-first approach using Tailwind CSS responsive utilities.
🚀 Deployment Strategy
🖥️ Frontend
Vercel – Automatic deployments from GitHub
⚙️ Backend
Render – Continuous deployment with health checks
🗄️ Database
PostgreSQL on Supabase – Managed with backups
🔐 Environment
Secure env variables across all platforms
📦 Deployment Best Practices: Environment variables carefully managed, staging environment for testing, automatic SSL certificates, and health monitoring endpoints.
📚 Key Learnings
🏗️
Full Stack Architecture
Building scalable client-server applications
💳
Payment Integration
Secure Razorpay webhook implementation
🗄️
Database Design
PostgreSQL relationships and transactions
🚀
Production Deployment
Vercel + Render + Supabase workflow
🐛
Debugging
Systematic production issue resolution
📧
Email Automation
Nodemailer configuration and templates
🎯 Final Outcome
✨
Golden Leaf Knots evolved from an Instagram-driven business into a complete ecommerce platform capable of handling product discovery, online payments, order processing, and customer communication through a professional digital experience.
100%
Manual Process Reduction
24/7
Automated Order Taking
Production
Ready Platform
"The project became one of the most valuable real-world applications in my development journey and significantly improved my understanding of production-grade software engineering."
Frequently asked questions
Is it worth moving from an Instagram store to a real ecommerce platform?
Once order volume passes roughly thirty a week, yes. DM ordering has no inventory truth, no order history and no automated confirmations, so the operational load grows faster than the revenue. A storefront turns each of those from manual work into a database row.
What should a small handmade brand build first?
Catalog, cart and a checkout that actually verifies payment. Everything else — reviews, wishlists, loyalty — can wait. A reliable order pipeline is the entire product; the rest is decoration until it exists.
How do you handle product variants for handmade goods?
Model variants as their own rows with independent stock, not as attributes on the parent product. Handmade items vary per unit, and a variant-level stock count is the only structure that survives a one-of-a-kind piece selling out.
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