Case Study · AI for Ecommerce
A content system that runs the marketing for a Lake Tahoe tea brand
Tica and Mike run Tahoe Teas as a family. The products are real and the voice is theirs. What they didn't have was the time to rewrite the same idea four times over for email, the blog, Instagram, and a text message. So I built the software that does it for them, with Tica approving every word before it goes out.
- Client
- Tahoe Teas, Ecommerce
- Role
- Design + AI Engineering
- Engagement
- 2026 to present
Where it started
From one email flow to the whole calendar
The first job was narrow. Replace Klaviyo for the welcome flow and the signup popup, which I cut over in May 2026. It worked, and then the real problem showed up: the welcome email was one of four places Tahoe Teas needed to appear every week, and the other three were still getting written by hand.
In June 2026 the app stopped being the “Email System” and became the Tahoe Teas Content System, with one job: take a good idea and turn it into a week of content that sounds like them, without Tica starting from a blank page.
The loop
Idea in, published content out, then it learns
It's a closed loop. What gets published feeds the next round of ideas, so the system should get sharper the longer it runs.
01
Ideas, ranked
The system reads the empty weeks on the calendar, the season in Tahoe, keywords nobody has covered yet, what went out recently, and what actually sold. Then it hands Tica a ranked list of what to write next.
02
One click drafts every channel
Pick an idea. The Studio writes the email, the Shopify blog post, the Instagram caption, and the text at the same time. Each one is written for its own channel instead of the same paragraph pasted four times.
03
A quality gate before anyone sees it
The email and the blog post each get written more than once, and a smaller, cheaper model picks the better version. Then a brand voice check scores every piece from 0 to 100 and strips the em dash, because nothing says a robot wrote this faster.
04
The owner approves from her phone
Tica gets a link. No password, no login to remember. She reads each channel and signs off on them one at a time, and nothing goes out without her yes.
05
Publish, then learn
Approved pieces publish on schedule. Opens, clicks, and revenue from Shopify discount codes flow back in, so the next round of ideas already knows what worked.
One idea → four channels
Welcome flow + broadcasts
SEO articles
Image posts
Short, timely
SMS is built and follows TCPA consent rules. It's waiting on carrier approval (Twilio A2P 10DLC) and does not deliver yet. Instagram is image only, so reels and anything with licensed music still get posted by hand. Facebook cross posting was deferred on purpose.
Why it can be trusted
Nothing publishes without a person saying yes
Grounded in their own writing
Copy Tahoe Teas already approved is stored as vectors in Postgres and pulled into the prompt before a word gets written. New writing sounds like them because it's built out of them.
A person decides, every time
The AI proposes and drafts. Tica approves each channel separately, and skipping that step isn't an option the software offers.
Honest about what it can't do yet
SMS is built and consent compliant, but it's waiting on carrier approval and isn't reaching anyone yet. Instagram publishes images only. Facebook was left out on purpose.
Wired into the store
Subscribers, discount codes, and published articles all sync with Shopify. When a code gets used, the revenue points back at the piece of content that sent it.
What changed for them
A two-person shop that publishes like a team
Instead of a blank calendar, Tica opens a ranked list of ideas that already know what the store needs. One click drafts the week. She reads it on her phone, approves what she likes, and the rest goes out on schedule.
The voice holds steady across all four channels because it's built on their own past writing. No generic house style, and no drift from one tool to the next.
The math
What building it in-house saves
$4,400/yr
Subscriptions replaced
AI writer, social scheduler, blog retainer, design tool
~12 hrs/mo
Owner time reclaimed
Writing & scheduling, valued at ~$40/hr
~$10,100/yr
Estimated total savings
Avoided tools plus reclaimed labor
The honest version: a build like this pays for itself by retiring a stack of subscriptions and handing Tica back about a dozen hours a month. I kept the numbers deliberately small. They count only the tools the system replaced and the hours it gave back. No revenue claims, because I don't have audited numbers and I'm not going to invent them.
AssumptionsReplaced tools: AI writer (~$468/yr), Buffer (~$180/yr), a freelance blog/SEO retainer at 2 posts/mo × $150 (~$3,600/yr), and Canva (~$120/yr). Reclaimed time: ~12 hrs/mo at a conservative ~$40/hr (~$5,760/yr). The email platform itself counts as $0, because the brand still needs one either way. The real benefit is probably higher.
Built with
- Next.js 16
- React 19
- Tailwind v4
- Drizzle + Neon (pgvector)
- Resend
- Shopify Admin GraphQL
- Instagram Graph API
- Twilio
- Notion
- Vercel Blob + Cron
- AI SDK v6 + AI Gateway
- Claude Opus 4.6 + Haiku 4.5
Doing the same work by hand?
If you keep retyping the same idea in four places, there's usually a system worth building. Doesn't matter whether you sell tea or software. Tell me what's eating your week.