Building for CRAFT: Designing a Hybrid In‑Person and Online Experience

A friend asked me to help her think through how people at a Craft Fair might purchase Stained Glass and Oil Blend products from her.

Following an initial interview with Logan, this project turned into designing an end-to-end experience for her brand—a chance to come to know what CRAFT is offering, and to build an in-person and online experience of the brand that amplifies it.

Deciding to leave my position as VP of Sales created space to put my experience and effort toward projects like this that feel so much more aligned.

I'm here to share my process, but if you're looking for me to yank a pre-baked pie out of the oven,

here it is:

See my Work

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The First Hurdle: This Isn’t Just About Transactions

A Craft Fair Is a First Encounter, Not a Checkout Line

The first hurdle identified was simple: People will walk up and hopefully walk away having purchased a product they connect with (with a positive experience of CRAFT itself). It became clear this was more than a question about how to process transactions. People will walk up and experience the CRAFT brand for the first time. There's a lot more to that, but that's good news. It's exciting when you are resourced enough and have help.

My approach to design:

Understand what is wanting to live and amplify it.

The Process: Design Begins With Attention, Not Solutions

It starts with discovery. Who is Logan and what is CRAFT?

How does Logan speak? What is the pace? Where does she light up?

What are the natural questions/goals Logan and CRAFT are approaching? How does the question, the approach, the constraints help further understand both Logan and CRAFT itself?

Start with one of today's simple known goals:

“How do we create a buying experience that feels as handcrafted and wholehearted as the products themselves, without burying Logan in logistics?”

What I offer is to meet you where you are right now, holding your inspiration in your hands. An initial conversation with me starts there. Through interview, we'll further out connection with this inspiration while in time I start to consider what elements could come in to support you. This could be an event, a branding update, or in this case an in-person and digital buying experience for customers meeting CRAFT for the first time.

In our initial conversation, one specific piece of helping users through a buying experience was seeing an inspiration to have people be able to not only order ready-made oil blends, but also request a custom blend for someone they love. A scent, along with specific consideration, for a loved one.

The customized and mindful nature of this struck me as connected to the handcrafted and sincere presence Logan has behind CRAFT. It's first priority isn't scale, it's attention.

We all play different roles, and guiding this distillation is where mine starts. If we build something together too fast and aren't connected to a deep understanding of the initiating inspiration, what we build won't really satisfy the part of us that was inspired in the first place. We could make a lot of sales and not really feel like ourselves while doing it. It would pay for dinner, but that dinner then runs the risk of lacking a sense of wholeheartedness.

This type of attention is an option. It's not necessarily correct. It is simply the perspective I have to offer and the one I believe in.

Before understanding the shape of the entire in-person and online buying experience... I drilled into this aspiration of people being able to consider a loved one and send a customized scent and experience their way.

This is where I get to let lose the considerer within me. For example, this collection could be analog (clipboard) or digital (Typeform, Google Form, etc). Whatever is built needs to honor the essence of the inspiration while also populating the map of the unseen. Clipboards are tactile, you can also spill coffee on a clipboard. Google Forms are effective in that they collect information, but they also invite the user back into a familiar digital design system that could feel asynchronous with the heart of CRAFT.

Chapter 1: Help Customers Design a Custom Blend

Customers (in-person or far away) now had a way to request a customized blend for themselves or a loved one. Even as it was mocked up, the method for payment (Venmo, Cash, Integrate Stripe Checkout) hadn't been defined, but this page was a small step helped us evaluate: Does this amplify one of the offerings that is so reflective of the CRAFT brand?

Chapter 2: How would people buy a Stained Glass piece?

The initial form resonated. I continued down this path to create a shop for Stained Glass pieces.

This now mean people could shop inventory whether they were at the craft fair, or in another state. Someone at the craft fair could share Logan's work with a loved one far away. They also got exposure to the idea that they could return to this shop at a later date and have the piece mailed to them. CRAFT was now easier to share, remember, and find your way back to. To make payment convenient and familiar, I added an integrated Stripe checkout.

Chapter 4: A Way to Manage Inventory, Keep Track of Orders & Review Metrics

By this point so many customizations had been implemented to ensure success:

• Applying CRAFT's branding and typography

• Building a coupon system for Logan to offer discounts to friends,

• A way for customers to share testimonials that Logan could review and approve to be displayed on the front end of the website,

• Quick Sale (which preserved someone at the craft fair's ability to pay in cash or Venmo which would still decrease the inventory by one and keep track of the sale)

• A quick view of Total Revenue

• A button to quickly refund the charge and add back the inventory if someone returned needing to return an item they purchased

• A method for collecting custom Stained Glass requests

• A "Needs Attention" feature to quickly highlight which orders were waiting to be shipped

• A dedicated Metrics section to later have a data-backed reflection on what products resonated

• A customers table so Logan could retrieve a CSV of customer emails for email marketing and also review things like Lifetime Value of a customer as repeat orders start to come through

Outcomes: What This Made Possible

By the time the full system was in place, the most meaningful outcomes weren’t just technical—they were experiential.

For Logan, this meant:

• Less cognitive load preparing and during the craft fair.

  Instead of juggling inventory, payments, and follow-up details in her head, she could stay present with customers and her work. She simply brought her inspiration to an initial call and we took it from there, together.

• A buying experience that felt aligned with her values.

  Customers weren’t rushed through a transaction. They were invited into the spirit of CRAFT—care, attention, and intention—whether they were purchasing in person or from afar.

• Clear visibility into orders and inventory.

  At any moment, Logan could see what had sold, what needed to ship, and what required follow-up—without piecing together multiple tools.

• Accessible Business Insights.

  Logan now easily knows how much she made that day, that the Ornament outperformed the Arches by 8x, and that there is $2,200 in inventory left that customers across the country can easily purchase online to be shipped.

For customers, the experience offered:

• A simple way to request something personal.

  The custom oil blend flow made it easy to consider a loved one and create a gift that felt thoughtful rather than transactional.

• A path to stay connected beyond the fair.

  Even after walking away from the booth, customers knew where to return—whether to share Logan’s work with someone else or purchase again later.

• A sense of coherence between the work and the experience of buying it.

  The products didn’t just look handmade; the process of acquiring them felt that way too.

"What mattered most to me was not feeling overwhelmed. I could arrive at the first call connected to my inspiration for CRAFT and trust that the rest—systems, experience, logistics—would be thoughtfully held and guided."

Logan, creator of CRAFT

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In Summary:

What began as a simple question—how do people purchase stained glass and oil blends at a craft fair?—became an exploration of something deeper: how a brand is first met, felt, and remembered.

Rather than rushing to a single solution, I followed the energy of what was already alive in CRAFT. That meant designing a buying experience that honored the handcrafted, attentive nature of the work itself—one that could flex across in-person and online contexts without asking the maker to sacrifice presence for logistics.

The result wasn’t just a checkout flow. It was an ecosystem:

• A way for customers to request custom oil blends with intention

• A shop that allowed stained glass to be purchased in person or shared with someone far away

• Inventory and order management that supported cash, Venmo, and Stripe without fragmentation

• Tools that helped Logan stay organized, reflect on what resonated, and grow without losing herself in the process

Most importantly, it created an experience that felt aligned—for the customer and the maker.

This is the kind of work I’m interested in: meeting a real, living idea where it is, listening closely, and building structures that amplify it rather than flatten it. Sometimes that looks like a website. Sometimes it’s a system. Often it’s both.

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