Mabel Brempong
A luxury couture house was run on spreadsheets, email and a rigid theme. I replaced it with one platform in two halves: the storefront their customers browse, and Atelier — the admin that runs it. Every commission from first enquiry to final fitting, a visual site editor, the whole Shopify catalog — and maker conversations that translate themselves between the studio and Como.
A client build for Mabel Brempong — live at mabelbrempong.com.
A luxury brand run on spreadsheets
A growing couture house was managing a high-end brand on spreadsheets, email and a rigid Shopify theme — no way to edit their own site, track commissions across a long fitting pipeline, or brief overseas makers cleanly.
A storefront, and the atelier behind it
Two halves of one platform: the public storefront their customers browse, and Atelier — the admin that runs everything behind it. Commissions, the visual site editor, the whole Shopify catalog, clients, money, and maker threads that translate themselves.
The studio and its makers
The atelier team runs every commission from one board, and the beading atelier in Como reads every brief in Italian — everyone working from the same live picture.
One screen per commission
Open a commission and everything is in one place: where it sits in the 13-stage pipeline, the client, what’s been paid, the live maker conversation, and quick access to designs, fittings and finances.
Stage guards keep the process honest — contract signed, deposit paid, design approved — before a gown moves forward.
A visual studio for each dress
A spatial moodboard per project. Drop in fabric photos, sketches, lace details, colour swatches and notes; arrange them freely, tag and filter, zoom in to compare. The same board reads three ways — free canvas, tidy grid, or a timeline pinned to the commission’s stages.
Fabrics that stay in sync
Pull a fabric straight from the Shopify catalog onto the board. It stays linked — price and stock update automatically — so the moodboard always reflects what’s actually available and what it costs. No copy-pasting spec sheets.
One thread, every language
The studio and its beading atelier in Como talk to each other — each in their own language — without anyone copy-pasting into a translator. The sender’s language is detected on its own, translation runs both directions, and the original is one tap away. The same conversation, two phones:
The whole catalog, in one place
Every collection and product, backed by the Shopify Admin API — browsed, curated and created without leaving the admin. Open any product for the full editor: images, rich descriptions, variants, pricing and publish state, every change syncing back to Shopify.
Merchandising without the busywork
The fiddly parts are handled: images are optimised the moment they’re uploaded, colour swatches are one click, and products link to one another to build colourways, size runs and a “shop the look”.
Everything in the platform
The deep-dives above are a few standout pieces. This is the whole system — storefront, admin, backend and integrations, designed and built end to end for a single couture house.
Commission pipeline
- 13 stages, inquiry → delivery
- Stage guards & one-click advance
- Dated stage history & audit trail
- On-track / at-risk / delayed status
- VIP & at-risk flags at a glance
Design & making
- Design versions — draft, presented, approved — with client feedback
- Versioned measurement sets, custom fields
- Fittings — toile, silk, final
- Alterations by area & severity
- Change requests & delight items
Workspace canvas
- Free, board & timeline views
- Upload, paste, or import from catalog
- Fabric, sketch, lace, colour & document tags
- Linked catalog fabrics — live price & stock
- Swatches, zoom & pan, undo
Messaging & translation
- Automatic language detection
- Both-directions translation, per-reader language
- Original always one tap away
- WhatsApp messages flow into the thread
- Reactions, replies & attachments
Money
- Deposits, balances, rush & alteration fees, refunds
- Minor-unit currency — no float errors
- Invoice numbers & payment status
- PDF atelier work packets
Front desk
- Client CRM — VIP, tags, history
- AI-triaged enquiry inbox — category, confidence, draft reply
- Consultation lifecycle, one-click convert to client
- Calendar with Google Calendar sync
Catalog & content
- Shopify Admin–backed product & collection editor
- Curate collections — search, add, reorder
- Images auto-optimised on upload
- One-click colour swatches per variant
- Colourways, size runs & “shop the look”
Site editor
- 24 section types — heroes, carousels, editorial, banners
- Live preview in real device frames
- Per-breakpoint sizes & positions
- Drafts, templates, scheduling & publish
Platform & backend
- Google Cloud — Firestore, Auth, Cloud Functions, Storage
- Role-based access, invite-only onboarding
- Transactional email — MailerSend · Klaviyo
- AI — Gemini & Claude
- Shopify, Google Calendar & WhatsApp Cloud API
The website, the workroom and the maker in Como on one system. They edit the storefront themselves, the atelier tracks every commission from first enquiry to final fitting — and nobody copy-pastes into a translator.
Mabel Brempong · a Codésence client build · live at mabelbrempong.com