Tom Sailors
Archive · Published briefs

Shopify briefs

Anonymized case studies from a Shopify Plus developer — real merchant problems (B2B, Subscriptions, Functions, shipping, loyalty, agent readiness) broken into four-piece sketches with runnable code.

May 29, 2026

B2B Subscriptions for Recurring Wholesale Orders

A wholesale brand on Plus needed to build a bridge between Subscriptions and B2B Companies. The pattern: map each buyer company to a subscription plan, store location-level pricing rules in metadata, …

May 21, 2026

Bulk Customer Import with Loyalty Preservation

Migrating a large customer base from a legacy system into Shopify requires a four-step approach: validate and map the source data to Shopify's schema, batch-import customers with tags and metafields, …

May 21, 2026

Delivery Customization Blocklist

A Delivery Customization Function reads the customer's zip code at checkout and consults a blocklist of known service gaps. When a zip matches the blocklist, Saturday disappears from the available del…

May 21, 2026

Bulk Packing Slip & Pick List Generation

Build an admin extension that adds bulk order selection, custom packing slip templates, and single-file PDF export to Shopify's native admin. Tag unfulfilled or partially fulfilled orders in the Order…

May 21, 2026

Carrier-Specific Cutoff Ship Promises

Build a system that locks carrier cutoff times (e.g., 2pm CT for UPS Ground same-day) into the storefront. The merchant runs a backend service that calculates ship and arrival dates in real time, pass…

May 21, 2026

Automated Order Lookup Chatbot

Build a chat widget that lives on the storefront and retrieves order history and product details from Shopify in real time. When a customer asks "where's my order," the bot pulls that data, generates …

May 21, 2026

Daily Operations Digest

Build a backend service that runs on schedule, pulls sales, forecast, shipping fallback events, support metrics, and tax status from connected systems, and pipes that data into a templated email. Send…

May 21, 2026

Autonomous Monitoring Agent for Shopify Operations

Build a monitoring agent that watches four critical system layers: compute health (Heroku dyno response times and error rates), external integrations (carrier uptime checks), data freshness (catalog s…

May 21, 2026

Referral Rewards Engine

A custom app generates unique referral codes for each customer and stores them in metafields. When a referred friend lands via a referral URL and places a first order, Shopify Flow detects it, tags th…

May 21, 2026

Points & Redemption Portal

Build a loyalty system that records points to customer accounts on order completion, then expose balances and redemption in a dedicated portal. The merchant can set the earning multiplier (points per …

May 21, 2026

WooCommerce to Shopify Plus Migration

Migrating from WooCommerce to Shopify Plus requires four overlapping systems: a bulk product and inventory importer that stores original WooCommerce IDs as reference metadata; a URL redirect router th…

May 21, 2026

US & Canada Split with Unified Customers

Split a single store into region-specific frontends by syncing customers bidirectionally, bridging inventory from one central source to both store locations, routing customers to the correct region at…

May 21, 2026

B2B and High-Value Order Payment Controls

Disable Shop Pay Installments for two customer segments: those tagged as B2B and those placing orders over $5,000. Show a disclosure message at checkout explaining why the option is unavailable. Autom…

May 21, 2026

Subscription and One-Time Mixed-Cart Blocker

Start by marking subscription products in the admin with a custom metafield flag. Build a Shopify Function that reads this flag and rejects any cart containing both subscription and one-time items whe…

May 21, 2026

Bulk Quantity Discount Engine

Build a Cart Transform Function that reads bulk-pricing tiers stored on each product metafield and applies the appropriate discount to each line. Display the tier thresholds and savings amounts in the…

May 21, 2026

Shipping Rate Failover & Alert

Detect when a carrier returns no rates for an addressable zip at checkout. Query a secondary carrier instantly for fallback rates. Send an alert to operations when both primary and backup fail. Track …

May 21, 2026

ShipEngine Rates with Failover

Implement a delivery function that captures cart and address data at checkout, then invoke both ShipEngine and Shopify's native rates in parallel. Return whichever set of rates responds within 800ms. …

May 21, 2026

Wholesale Collection Gate

Hide wholesale collections behind a verified B2B customer tag. Check the tag at collection render time and return a 404 to anyone without it. Remove wholesale links from navigation and search results …

May 21, 2026

Wholesale Portal & Contract Pricing

Build a B2B wholesale system where each buyer company is tagged with a tier and product-specific pricing stored as metafields. Route wholesale customers to a private portal that displays contract pric…

May 21, 2026

B2B Net 30 Checkout Gate

Build a credit-approval flag stored on each B2B customer account. Use a Checkout UI extension to hide the payment step for approved customers. Display net 30 terms and "no payment required" messaging …

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