Taking back control of a store that another company owned

The problem

The reseller's previous site imported more than 20,000 products from about 50 suppliers, with images, specifications and price breaks by quantity. A third party built it, hosted it and owned the data, and after most of a year it was still not finished. The client already ran several WooCommerce stores of their own and wanted this one back in their hands, starting with one supplier that offered an API and adding more over time.

How we built it

We built the integration as a plugin, not inside the theme, with each supplier's code in its own module. Adding a second supplier means adding a module, not reworking the store. The plugin imports the supplier's products, categories and images, and keeps them updated from the API.

• Pricing with quantity breaks comes from the supplier's data rather than being copied into the store, so prices stay current.
• Product pages were customised for promotional products, where quantity breaks and product options drive the price.
• Product images use the product title as alt text by default.

Results

• A store the business owns and controls, live in about five weeks.
• A supplier catalogue that updates itself instead of being re-keyed.
• An architecture ready for the next supplier. The client came back for further work on search and filtering.

Client name and site withheld at our discretion. Details are taken from the project record.