# Merme: a Shopify store and the inventory system behind it

How BotBrained built merme.in, a custom Shopify theme for a handcrafted stoneware brand, and the offline-first inventory system that follows every piece from the Auroville workshops to the Morbi warehouse to the storefront.

_Case study · Shopify + custom inventory_

- **Client:** [Merme](https://merme.in)
- **Sector:** Handcrafted stoneware, woodfired pottery and gift hampers, shipped pan-India
- **Services:** Custom Shopify theme · Inventory system · Shopify integration · Android app (TWA)
- **Status:** Storefront live on merme.in since August 2026; inventory system in production use

## What was the problem?

Merme sells wheel-thrown stoneware made in small batches by artisans in Auroville. Pieces move from several workshops to a warehouse in Morbi and from there to customers across India. Stock lived in spreadsheets and messages, so the store could sell a piece that was still on a workshop shelf, or fail to list one that had arrived.

A Shopify store on a template was not the problem. The problem was that nothing between the workshop and the storefront was designed to be operated by the people actually packing and receiving cartons, on phones, often without a reliable connection.

## What did BotBrained build?

1. **A theme designed around the product.** A custom Dawn-derived Liquid theme with the brand’s serif identity carried through collections, product pages and gifting flows. Every section is editable from the theme editor, so the team changes campaigns without a developer.
2. **Camera-first packing on the workshop floor.** Packers photograph pieces as they go into a carton and write a short carton code by hand. Codes carry a check digit, so a misread code is caught at the warehouse instead of becoming a wrong count. Packing works offline and syncs when the phone finds a signal.
3. **Receiving with an append-only ledger.** The warehouse receives cartons against what was packed. Every receipt is a ledger entry, never an overwrite, so discrepancies are visible and traceable rather than silently corrected. New products and variants are staged, approved and merged before they touch the catalogue.
4. **Delta-only sync to Shopify.** Only the difference in stock is written to Shopify, with a nightly reconciliation against the store so the two never drift. The storefront cannot sell a piece that is not physically on a shelf.
5. **Three surfaces, one codebase.** Packer, receiver and admin dashboard are role-gated views of one app, localised for the floor teams and packaged as an Android app so it installs like any other.

### Stack

- Shopify Online Store 2.0, Dawn-derived Liquid theme
- Cloudflare Workers (Hono) API
- Supabase (Postgres) with invariant functions
- Offline-first PWA, packaged as an Android app
- Shopify Admin GraphQL, webhooks, nightly reconciliation

### Details that mattered

- Handwritten carton codes with a check digit and offline code blocks, replacing printed QR stickers
- Staging, approval and merge flow for new designs and variants
- Image-match pipeline that learns from confirmed matches
- Shopify write path built on the 2026-07 Admin API with idempotent inventory adjustments
- Isolated QA identities and nodes so testing never writes to the live store

## Something like this?

Tell us what your business needs to run on. You will get a straight answer on whether we are the right team, and a fixed-price scope if we are.

[WhatsApp the team](https://wa.me/918099066799?text=Hi%20BotBrained%2C%20I%20read%20the%20Merme%20case%20study%20and%20want%20to%20talk%20about%20something%20similar%20for%20my%20business.) · [Send a brief](https://botbrained.com/#contact)

### Related

- [Shopify agency in Hyderabad: services, pricing and process](https://botbrained.com/shopify-agency-hyderabad/)
- [Shopify vs a custom storefront for an Indian D2C brand](https://botbrained.com/blog/shopify-vs-custom-storefront-india/)
- [Multi-tenant SaaS architecture for Indian SMBs](https://botbrained.com/blog/multi-tenant-saas-architecture-indian-smbs/)

Smaran Challapalli, Founder & Lead Engineer, BotBrained. Updated 2026-09-16.