Sandgrain Studio
How GWP became Sandgrain Studio's fractional CTO and full-stack technology team — providing architecture, engineering, product management, QA, UI/UX, and IT operations to turn strategic vision into shipped software.
Summary: Sandgrain Studio was growing fast but drowning in operational complexity. GWP stepped in as fractional CTO — not just advising, but building. Architecture, engineering, product management, QA, UI/UX, and IT operations: one engagement that covers the entire technology function. GWP formulated the plan, then made the plan happen.
The Client
Sandgrain Studio is a mid-century modern art studio selling museum-quality prints. Their design aesthetic is upscale pop culture — Japandi-influenced, collectible, and distinctly premium. They work with multiple print suppliers and sell through Shopify to a global customer base.
In late 2024, Sandgrain's founders were making the leap to full-time. The business was growing. The opportunity was real. But the operational reality was catching up fast.
The Problem
“We have a lot of opportunity, but I'm overwhelmed.”
— Will, Co-founder, Sandgrain Studio
Sandgrain had hit a fork in the road. Growth was accelerating, but the systems underneath couldn't keep up:
New product creation was a multi-day process spanning 4–5 disconnected systems. Every new piece of art had to be manually configured across multiple print suppliers, each with their own SKU formats, pricing, and variant structures.
Support ticket volume was climbing and eating into time that should have been spent on the business, not in it.
Orders to some suppliers were being placed by hand — copy-pasting details between systems, one order at a time.
Pricing changes were painful Updating prices across hundreds of products meant hours of manual work, making it hard to respond to market conditions quickly.
Standard options and variants were inconsistent — different products had different configurations, making the catalog harder to manage as it grew.
The founders were capable. The business was strong. But they didn't have the technical depth to see the whole system and figure out the next move. They needed a fractional CTO, not a freelancer.
How It Started
Will reached out to Josh Schairbaum at GWP through their network. They met for lunch, talked through the challenges over biscuits, and started ideating on what the business actually needed.
Josh started the following week with a 90-day plan focused on two things: website conversion and support metrics. But the scope of the engagement quickly expanded as the full picture came into focus — this wasn't a project with a finish line. It was a business that needed an embedded technology partner.
The Approach
GWP didn't come in to fix one thing or hand over a plan for someone else to execute. The engagement covers the full stack of what a growing e-commerce business needs from a technology team — strategy through execution, all under one roof:
Fractional CTO
Strategic technology leadership — setting the roadmap, making architecture decisions, and aligning technology with business goals
Product management
Defining what to build, why, and in what order — translating business needs into prioritized, shippable work
Architecture
Designing systems that scale instead of break — data models, integrations, and infrastructure decisions
Engineering
Writing the code, building the apps, and shipping production features — from backend APIs to Shopify integrations
UI/UX design
Designing interfaces that are intuitive for internal operators and delightful for customers
QA & testing
Ensuring every release is reliable — test coverage, regression testing, and production monitoring
IT operations
Keeping the infrastructure running, secure, and backed up — deployments, backups, and system health
Order fulfillment
Hands-on involvement in getting products to customers — automating the entire order-to-shipment pipeline
Support systems
Configuring Freshdesk, optimizing ticket workflows, and reducing resolution time
Business advisory
Strategic counsel on decisions that aren't purely technical — pricing, vendor selection, and growth planning
This breadth is the point. Sandgrain gets a fractional CTO who is also the architect, the engineer, the PM, the QA lead, and the IT admin — all in a single engagement. No handoff gaps. No translation layers between “the person who designed it” and “the person who built it.” GWP formulates the plan and makes the plan happen.
The Solution
A Blueprint Engine for Print-on-Demand
The centerpiece of the technical work is SGS Fulfill — a custom application that fundamentally redesigned how Sandgrain creates and manages products.
One piece of art × 3 product formats × 3 sizes × 2 print suppliers =
18 product variations
to manually create, price, and track.
Now multiply that by hundreds of artworks. It was impossible to scale.
Products as DNA — define the ingredients and instructions once, then apply that recipe to any new artwork.
Seconds, not days
in a single unified system.
The system works in three layers
Vendor SKUs — The Ingredients
Every specific item from every printer's catalog — not just “a poster,” but “classic matte paper poster, 50×70cm, from Supplier A” — is cataloged as a raw material.
Product Lines — The Menu
Vendor SKUs are grouped into branded categories. A “Premium Framed Print” line uses better paper and fancier frames than a “Standard Poster” line. This is the customer-facing organization.
Blueprints — The DNA
A blueprint is a master template that connects the brand concept to the physical items. It says: “To make a Premium Framed Print, use these specific vendor SKUs for small, medium, and large, and apply this pricing formula.”
The result: An artist uploads one high-resolution file. Someone applies a blueprint in SGS Fulfill. The system automatically generates every product variation and pushes them to Shopify. What used to take days across multiple systems now takes seconds in one.
Automated Fulfillment
The automation doesn't stop at product creation. When a customer places an order, SGS Fulfill takes over:
Shopify fires a webhook to SGS Fulfill
SGS Fulfill determines which printer fulfills which item
The printer receives the order details and a secure, one-time-use download link for the high-resolution print file (protecting the artist's IP)
When the printer ships, tracking info flows back to Shopify automatically
The customer gets notified
Zero human touch from order to shipment.
Smart File Management
The system creates two versions of every artwork:
Web-optimized display file
Small, fast cloud storage — so product pages load instantly
Full-resolution print file
Secure storage — so printers get perfect quality
Customers get speed. Printers get fidelity. The artist's original file stays protected.
The Results
| Metric | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| New product development | Multi-day process across 4–5 systems | Seconds, in a single system |
| Product launches | Baseline | Increased 20% |
| Pricing changes | Hours of manual work | Seconds (bulk price management) |
| Revenue impact of pricing change | — | +3% overall revenue |
| Change-of-address workflow | Manual lookup across 3 systems | Automated in 1 system |
| Order fulfillment (select suppliers) | Manual, order-by-order | Fully automated, zero-touch |
| Year-over-year growth | — | 20% YoY |
Beyond the App
SGS Fulfill is the most visible piece of work, but the engagement covers the full surface area of Sandgrain's technology operations:
Automated backup systems
Scripts that back up all Shopify and Freshworks data, themes, and configurations to GitHub
Support optimization
Freshdesk configuration and workflow improvements to handle growing ticket volume
Change-of-address automation
A custom app that consolidated a 3-system manual lookup into a single automated workflow
Bulk price management
A system that enabled a catalog-wide pricing change in seconds, directly contributing to a 3% revenue increase
Infrastructure and data protection
Operational ownership of backups, deployments, and system health
Why It Works
The power of the blueprint model isn't just that it saves time. It's that it creates an abstraction layer — separating the idea of a product from the physical reality of who prints it and how.
If a paper supplier goes out of business, or Sandgrain finds a more eco-friendly option, they don't manually edit thousands of products. They update one blueprint and every connected product updates instantly.
This is what systems thinking looks like in practice. Not fixing one thing at a time — redesigning the model so that entire categories of problems disappear.
What the Founders Say
“For the first time in months, I don't feel overwhelmed.”
“This sets us up for the future.”
The Bigger Idea
Sandgrain's blueprint engine was built for selling art prints, but the core pattern is universal. Any business selling customizable products across multiple suppliers — furniture, apparel, electronics — faces the same combinatorial explosion. The same abstraction solves it.
This is what GWP does. Not just build the thing in front of you — see the whole system, identify the fork in the road, and design a solution that scales.
Facing a similar challenge?
If your e-commerce business has hit a fork in the road — growing but stuck, capable team but lacking technical depth — GWP can help.
Get in Touch