Structure Before Software: Lessons from Ecommerce and Wine

Photo Credit: Richard Duval - winepix.net

Most system problems aren’t a software problem. 

After 25+ years designing ecommerce solutions for complex businesses, I’ve seen the same pattern repeat: tools get blamed when the underlying structure was never fully thought through. 

Wineries highlight this especially well. 

Tasting rooms aren’t retail stores. Inventory isn’t static. Sales don’t stop at the counter. Wine clubs, shipping, taxes, and reporting all intersect in ways generic systems don’t anticipate by default. 

That’s why my work always begins with understanding how a business actually operates before deciding how technology should support it. 

Much of this perspective comes from current work helping wineries think through POS and ecommerce systems, including Shopify POS implementations. 

Over the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing observations from both ecommerce and the wine

industry, focused on systems that scale cleanly instead of becoming workarounds layered on top of workarounds. 

Cheers!