SpecimenApology Nº 47
Dear customer,
We're sorry. The piece you ordered sold in our showroom yesterday afternoon. The website didn't know.
Please accept our apologies. Again.
Managed storefront accuracy
Your store,
true to your books.
Store Director keeps your storefront honest. Stock checked every five minutes, prices every hour, a full reconcile every night. Watched by people, not a dashboard.
Two typeset artefacts from one afternoon. First, a showroom receipt: number 2119, timed 16:42, for a kilim cushion in ochre, two of them, 1,040 euros, at 520 euros each. Second, the stock line in the books for the same piece, which moves from 4 to 2. Third, the storefront listing for the same piece: hand-embroidered, 45 by 45 centimetres, 520 euros, where the count of 4 available is struck through and corrected to 2 available. Two sold in the showroom at 16:42. Your storefront knew at 16:47.
Stock, every five minutes
A piece sells in the showroom. The website knows before the next customer looks.
The same entry, five minutes later, everywhere.
Prices, every hour
A change in your price list is the storefront's price within the hour. Every currency, every channel it feeds.
A reconcile, every night
Every SKU and every price, checked against your books while you sleep. Differences corrected, and logged. The record is yours to keep.
Ask about the cushion yourself.
Store Director assistant
You're looking at the ochre cushion. Two sold in the showroom this afternoon, so two remain. Ask me anything about it. I can't make anything up.16:48
Do you still have the ochre cushion?16:49
Two sold in the showroom this afternoon, so there are two left. I can hold one for you until Thursday.16:49
Could you do it in blue?16:52
Blue is made to order, about six weeks. I'll confirm the exact date before you commit to anything.16:52
What's the lead time to Paris?16:54
Three working days with DHL, and I'll send the tracking myself.16:54
Choose one of the three questions. The reply is a reconstruction, written by us and answered from the stock in the demonstration above.
A reconstruction. The real assistant runs on WhatsApp. A person approves every reply, and it only ever replies. It never messages first.
Four things that stop happening
A specimen, not a document anybody should have to send.
- A price change reaches the sales team but never reaches the website. The difference comes out of margin, quietly, for months.
- A WhatsApp enquiry is answered from memory. Memory was wrong.
- Someone spends Monday morning checking the website against a spreadsheet. Every Monday.
How it works
We look first.
The audit is read-only. We connect, touch nothing, and hand you one document: every place your store disagrees with your books, and what each disagreement costs. If your store turns out to be true, we will tell you that instead.
A page from the audit: the same storefront listing, marked up by hand. The listing price of 480 euros is struck through and corrected beside it to 520 euros. The count of 4 available is struck through. Two notes are written in the margin: two sold in the showroom at 16:42, the count never moved; and, list price 520 euros since 21 July, the site never heard. The page is stamped Audited.
We connect.
If the audit says the service is worth it, the install takes a day. Not a quarter. Your team changes nothing about how they work.
We watch.
Stock every five minutes, prices every hour, the reconcile every night. When something drifts, a person is alerted. Changes big enough to hurt are never written without a human confirming them.
You read one email a week.
The Monday digest: what was caught, what was corrected, and what it would have cost you if it had stayed wrong.
What's covered
| What we watch | How often | On drift | You receive |
|---|---|---|---|
| What we watchStock, every SKU | How oftenEvery five minutes | On driftCorrected and logged | You receiveAn alert if it repeats |
| What we watchPrices, every list | How oftenEvery hour | On driftCorrected and logged | You receiveAn alert past your threshold |
| What we watchThe full catalogue | How oftenEvery night | On driftReconciled against the books | You receiveThe nightly record, yours |
| What we watchLarge moves | How oftenHeld | On driftWait for human confirmation | You receiveA call, not a surprise |
| What we watchThe week | How oftenMonday | You receiveThe digest, in plain terms |
Price moves beyond an agreed percentage and stock moves beyond an agreed quantity are never written automatically. A person confirms them first.
Proof
Last night · …
Last night's reconcile: 3 corrections. Largest: …Sample
Store Director is a new product and we will not pretend otherwise. The engine has run in production since August 2026, and we publish each install's correction counts after its first quarter. If the audit finds your store does not need us, that is what the audit will say.
The price
An oversold one-off costs an apology and a refund. A stale price on a large piece costs the difference. An afternoon of checking the website against the books costs an afternoon, every week. Most stores pay these in small amounts, indefinitely, and call it normal.
The audit.
£1,950, fixed. Read-only, two weeks, every mismatch priced. Credited against your install if you continue.
Store Director.
£950 a month, plus a £1,000 install. One backend, one storefront, the watching, the alerts, the nightly record, the Monday digest, and a named person who answers. Month to month.
With the WhatsApp assistant.
£1,400 a month. Every enquiry answered from live stock at the true price. The assistant drafts, a person approves, the customer gets an answer that is right. One contract, one invoice.
Message costs are passed through at cost. We take no percentage of your sales.
We install two stores a month. That is not a marketing device. There are two of us, and installs get our full attention.
A ten-pound app will move numbers on a schedule. It will not notice when the numbers are wrong, and nobody will call you when they are. That is the difference, and it is the whole difference.
Who you're dealing with
Store Director is built and run by Studio Intangible, a design and technology studio. Two people, small by intention. You will know the name of everyone who can touch your store.
Access
The audit is read-only. Write access, when you grant it, is guarded: large changes wait for a person.
Data
Your records are yours. The nightly reconcile log is handed over, not held hostage. Nothing about your customers trains anything.
Capacity
Liability is capped in writing. The contract is month to month, and it includes a documented off-ramp: if we part ways, you leave with everything.
For you if:
- a showroom and a website sell from one stock pool.
- Pieces are made to order with real lead times.
- You sell on consignment or in editions.
- There is a system behind the office, or a spreadsheet pretending to be one.
Not for you if:
- you have forty pieces and one sales channel. A spreadsheet is fine, and we will say so.
- You need a dozen systems wired together. That is an integrator's job, and we will point you to one.
- You want a dashboard to watch. We sell you fewer things to watch.
Book the store audit
Four lines is all we need to start. We reply with a time and the list of what we will read.
Or write to hello@storedirector.app
FAQ
Which backend systems do you work with?
Any system that lets us read stock and prices. SAP Business One runs in production today. Odoo, Katana, Brightpearl, Unleashed and others expose what we need. The audit is where we find out what you have, including whether your current plan allows access at all. Some inexpensive tools lock their doors; we will tell you if yours does.
Is the audit safe?
It is read-only. We cannot change anything during an audit, by construction. You get the findings; your store is untouched.
What happens when something goes wrong at eleven at night?
Honestly: we are two people, not a twenty-four-hour desk. Alerts reach us during stated hours, drift is corrected by the nightly reconcile at the latest, and large changes are never written without human confirmation. The guarantee is the reconcile, not a pager.
Does your team have to change how they work?
No. Your team keeps working wherever they work. Your books stay the truth. We keep the two agreeing.
We have an ERP partner already.
Good. We work alongside them, read-only first, and any write access is scoped with them in writing. We are not competing for their contract.
Is the WhatsApp assistant an AI answering my customers?
It drafts. A person approves every reply before it sends. It reads your live stock and your live prices before it writes a word, so it cannot offer something that does not exist. That is the point of it.
What does the contract look like?
Month to month. Liability capped at fees paid. Your data and your reconcile record are yours, with a documented handover if you leave. No percentage of sales, ever.