Rant-n-Rave lists hundreds of new product variations each month. Each one has to go up on Shopify and on third-party marketplaces. This is the story of one product, before and after the new system.
One product, the old way: all by hand
A new item comes in. Someone edits the photos by hand. Someone writes the name, the description and the SEO title. Someone types the same details again for marketing, because merchandising and marketing keep separate records. Then someone posts it to each channel, one at a time.
Every listing was done this way. And it set the pace: the team could only release as many products each week as they had hours to list them. The hand work also led to errors and an uneven look across listings.
One product, the new way: about 80% less hand work
The owner puts the cut at about 80% of the repetitive work. Here is the path each item follows now.
- The photos go into Google Drive. The system logs the product in a Google Sheet with its SKU and attributes. That sheet is now the single record for every product.
- The sheet checks the details. Size, material and cost must be filled in before anything can publish.
- Photoroom cleans the images. It removes the background and makes every photo match.
- OpenAI writes the copy. It drafts the product name, the SEO title and the description, held to the brand’s tone and keywords.
- A person reviews and approves it in the sheet.
- n8n publishes it. It creates or updates the product and its variants on Shopify and syncs the third-party marketplaces.
- The result goes back to the sheet. Status and live links are written in, and a daily summary goes out by email.
If a listing needs a fix, a rollback job takes it down so the team can revise it fast.
What changed for the business
| Metric | Before | After | Impact |
|---|---|---|---|
| Repetitive listing work | All by hand | About 80% automated | Owner’s own estimate |
| Staff time a week | Every listing by hand | About 8 hours a week saved | Estimate from the owner’s 80% |
The system runs on its own with little supervision. The team spends its time on oversight, not data entry.
In the owner’s words
“It cut out 80% of the repetitive work: photo editing, posting, inventory, everything. Tyler was always accessible, fast to respond, and eager to improve any bottleneck.”
- Dawn Raymond, Owner, Rant‑n‑Rave
How we built it
The project took about 3 months from audit to launch.
- Weeks 1 to 2: We mapped the upload process end to end, found the steps done twice across teams and platforms, and set Google Sheets as the one source for SKUs, attributes and status.
- Weeks 3 to 10: We built the intake, the image and copy steps, the approval step and the publish and sync step.
- Weeks 11 to 12: We rolled it out to the merchandising and marketing staff with short how-to guides.
The tools behind it
- n8n runs the flow and the approvals.
- Photoroom API cleans and matches the images.
- Shopify API creates and updates products and variants.
- Google Drive takes in the photos.
- Google Sheets holds the product record and the reports.
- OpenAI writes names, SEO titles and descriptions.
What happens now
We make same-day changes as new product types come in. Each month we review the SEO terms and how they affect sales. Next on the plan is automatic A/B tests of titles and main product images.