Run a small product store as a library and a weekly drop
Small product sellers don't want a 1,500-SKU shop. They keep about 50 good products, show 20 to 25 at a time and change them every week. The catalogue module is built around that: a library, a live set, a weekly drop that is approved before it goes live, enquiries with a ref so the owner knows what sold, and nothing on the site that isn't backed by stored data.
How it works
- Bring the products in. Import a Shopify export or a CSV. Rows that fail create nothing, and old Shopify URLs redirect.
- Price against margin. Each product stores its cost. Margin on the price before GST, after cost and ₹99 shipping, shows beside the price. Anything under the owner's target (44% in the example) is flagged, and the pricing rule knows that apparel over ₹2,500 moves from 5% to 18% GST.
- Keep a library and a live set. The library holds 50 products. The live set is capped at 22. Only the live set renders on the site, in feeds and in search.
- Plan next week's drop. Pick what goes in, what comes out and the hero product. An audit checks stock, sizes, images and margin first.
- Publish at a set time as one release. For example, Monday 20:00. One click rolls it back. Products that rotate out keep their URL as "Back soon". Smaller changes publish in about a minute as their own release; only the set and the hero wait for the drop.
- Supplier changes wait for approval. The weekly price list goes into a staging area that is never public. New items, cost changes, stock-outs and discontinued items each wait for a yes; stock-outs can be approved in one tap. A cost change comes with a suggested price that keeps the margin.
- Failures are loud and safe. If an import, sync or drop fails, the site stays on the last good release. The owner gets WhatsApp and email naming the step, the item and the reason.
- Enquiries are the conversion. Every WhatsApp tap and form gets a ref and a row, and the owner marks what turned into an order, so the week's numbers are real.
What it is and isn't
Better than the usual store builder
- Cost, margin and a target on every product
- Library, live set and a scheduled weekly drop
- Hero product of the week across home, listing and feeds
- Supplier staging with a diff and approval
- Size charts once, attached to many products
- Shopify import with redirects
- Variant images while you create a product, not after
- Enquiries with refs and per-product numbers
- Approve from WhatsApp; theStacc can run the store and the owner still says yes
- Margins on the price before GST, with the GST slab in the pricing rule
Not in this module
- Cart, checkout, payments, orders and shipping. Those belong to the Commerce module, phase C
- Until then, every product's button is "Enquire on WhatsApp", prefilled with product, size and colour
- No fake "people ordered this" counters or urgency timers
- Ratings only from real reviews
- No marketplace, multiple vendors or point of sale
- Google Shopping: Merchant Center needs a page where the product can be bought, so it waits for Commerce. The Meta catalogue works now
Release order
| Phase | What ships | Epics |
|---|---|---|
| A · catalogue mode | Products, variants, media, attributes and size charts, categories, collections, Shopify/CSV import, storefront with WhatsApp enquiry, SEO and schema, weekly drop, enquiries inbox, drop numbers, supplier setup | E1–E6, E8, E9, E10 SEO, E11 |
| B | Inventory rules, bulk-edit grid, Meta and Google feeds, catalogue API, supplier staging and alerts, operator approvals, price lists by email, calendar planner | E7, E8 grid, E10, E12 |
| C · commerce | Cart, checkout, payments, orders, notifications | Commerce module |
Phase A alone covers the first prospect if a WhatsApp enquiry is acceptable instead of checkout.
Rules carried over from the website builder
- Every change is a typed command on versioned catalogue data, whether it comes from a person, an import, AI or the API.
- Prices, stock and claims on the site trace to a stored value. If a value is unknown, it is shown as unknown, never zero.
- AI and supplier scraping only propose changes. Code decides, a person approves, and a release publishes.
Still to decide
- Auto-apply supplier stock-outs? Recommended: off at launch; offer it per supplier after four clean lists.
- Approved supplier prices: with the drop or straight away? Recommended: with the next drop by default, with "publish now" one click away.
- Can theStacc schedule a drop after the owner approves on WhatsApp? Recommended: yes on managed plans. The owner approves every drop; the operator only presses the button.
- Lookbook as the default layout for the shop page? Recommended: yes, as a store setting; category pages stay a grid.
- Reviews before Commerce? Recommended: no. Nothing in catalogue mode produces a verified buyer.
- Product cap per plan. Recommended: 200 in the library on the first plan, 1,000 later.
- Hinglish and Malayalam AI descriptions. Recommended: in the language list, English first.
- Video hosting. Recommended: Cloudflare Stream, 100 MB and 90 seconds a clip.
- An MRP field that caps compare-at. Recommended: optional, with a warning rather than a block, until a lawyer has looked.
- Is WhatsApp enquiry enough for launch, or is checkout a hard requirement? Still open with the first prospect.