Ethnic ERP + Customer Portal

Ethnic Couture, a Pune-based ethnic wear retailer with two showrooms and an online wholesale channel, was running its entire operation from a combination of Excel workbooks, WhatsApp order messages, and handwritten stock ledgers. Inventory discrepancies between the showrooms were discovered only at month-end, by which time popular items had been double-promised to wholesale buyers and the resulting customer complaints were handled manually by the owner.

Billing was the biggest pain point: generating a GST-compliant invoice required cross-referencing three different spreadsheets (stock register, price list, and tax rate table), taking 8–12 minutes per transaction during peak festive season when the showroom floor was at its busiest. The team had evaluated two off-the-shelf ERP solutions but both required more configuration time than the business could sustain without a dedicated IT resource.

We built a custom ERP on a React + Node.js/Express stack with PostgreSQL (Prisma) as the database — chosen over an off-the-shelf solution specifically because the client's inventory model (fabric-based products with per-metre pricing, cut-piece variants, and embroidery add-ons) didn't map cleanly to standard SKU schemas.

The inventory module tracks stock at the variant level (product × colour × fabric type × size range) with real-time sync between both showroom terminals using polling over the REST API (30-second intervals). Billing generates GST-compliant invoices via a PDF template engine (PDFKit), with tax rates stored per product category — so a single "Generate Bill" click produces a ready-to-share PDF in under 3 seconds. The staff management module handles shift rosters, attendance (via a PIN login on the billing terminal), and basic commission calculations.

The customer-facing portal is a Next.js + Tailwind application deployed separately, integrated with the ERP backend via a scoped read-only API. It runs in kiosk mode on a showroom tablet, letting customers browse live inventory (automatically reflecting the ERP's stock levels), check order status, and view their purchase history — without involving a staff member for routine queries.

The full system — ERP core, both showroom terminals, and the customer kiosk portal — was deployed and the entire team of 11 staff was trained and live within a single week. Billing time dropped from 8–12 minutes per transaction to under 45 seconds. Inventory discrepancy incidents (stock promised but unavailable) fell to zero in the first month, as both terminals now draw from the same real-time source of truth.

The owner reported a 70% reduction in end-of-day reconciliation time, and the automated GST invoice generation removed a compliance risk that had previously required a monthly accountant visit. During the following Diwali season — the retailer's peak period — the system processed 340 bills in a single day without performance issues.