The People

CHX manufactures branded personal items right here in Cornwall. They were in the middle of a significant brand repositioning, shifting their focus towards recycled and recyclable products. This wasn’t just a cosmetic update; it was a fundamental change in how they presented themselves to the market.

They needed a new website to reflect these new brand guidelines, but more importantly, they needed a system that could keep up with their product innovation. They were launching new lines rapidly, and their existing digital infrastructure was becoming a bottleneck.

Retina Digital was brought in not just as a web developer, but as a technical partner to work alongside their independent designer. Our role was to build the engine room—the back-end architecture that would power their new direction.

The Problem

The core issue wasn’t the front end; it was the workflow behind it. CHX had a complex product catalogue where pricing wasn’t static. It relied on a dynamic structure that rewarded volume and varied by customer tier.

Their existing process for managing this was grueling. To launch a single new product, their team had to manually input data three separate times: once into their CRM (which doubled as a product management system), once into a master spreadsheet, and finally onto the website itself.

On the customer side, the requirements were equally demanding. They needed landing pages that showcased high-fidelity imagery without revealing pricing to the general public. The user interface had to handle a registration gateway, requiring manual approval from the sales team before an account could see costs or place orders.

Automating this without losing the personal touch was the key challenge. They didn’t want faceless automation; they wanted digital efficiency that triggered human conversations.

The Process

We approached this as a systems engineering problem, not a design task. We worked closely with the Sales Director and Marketing Manager to map out every step of their current process, looking for the redundancy.

It became clear that the manual data entry was the single biggest failure point. We needed a simplified architecture where data was entered once and propagated everywhere.

The Image Challenge: One of the most time-consuming aspects was image management. High-quality product photography is heavy. Loading different sizes for mobile, tablet, and desktop manually was a huge time sink. We implemented an automated image pipeline that takes a single high-resolution master file and dynamically serves the optimal size and format for the user’s device. This ensures the site remains lightning-fast without the marketing team needing to act as image editors.

The Pricing Logic: The complexity of their pricing structure required a custom-built grid system. We engineered a solution that calculates costs based on materials and volume breaks dynamically. This meant the website could handle the “maths” of a quote instantly, rather than a human needing to look up a table.

The Product

The finished platform offers a seamless experience for the customer. They can browse an up-to-date catalogue, see pricing that is relevant to their account status, and place orders through a slick, branded interface.

But the transformation in the back office was radical.

We replaced the manual triple-entry system with a custom import engine. The team now updates a single master spreadsheet, and the website updates itself via a custom script.

The task that used to take two days a week now takes 10 minutes.

That is a staggering 20% capacity increase for the Sales Director. By removing the administrative burden, we freed them up to focus entirely on high-value client interactions. And critically, we didn’t lock CHX into a dependency on us. We provided full training and documentation, allowing their internal team to take full ownership of the system without needing a costly ongoing maintenance contract.

Since launch, the system has required only minor development tweaks and continues to drive their digital sales operation autonomously.