Example build
Open an online store
Your products turned into a storefront, checkout and order tools. This page follows the whole Northwick Candle Co. build: the twenty systems, who built each one, and what it cost.
Northwick Candle Co. is our example store: hand-poured soy candles and home fragrance, about forty products, sold across the US and Canada. Every number on this page comes from that one build record. It is an example build, not a customer result.
What to ask
The twenty systems
The Retail AI Team proposed a storefront and the systems behind it, in six groups. "Build" means the AI team builds it. "Connect" means it connects a service the store will use.
| Group | System | Build or connect | AI teammate | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Front end | Storefront | Build | Design | Home, four collections, forty product pages, the cart and gift notes |
| Front end | Shopping agent | Build | Sales | Answers shoppers on every product page: scent notes, burn time, the wax, shipping to Canada |
| Front end | Checkout and payments | Connect | Coding | Cards, Apple Pay and Google Pay in USD and CAD |
| Growth | Marketing platform | Build | Marketing | Campaigns and segments: first-time buyers, gift buyers, repeat buyers, shoppers in Canada |
| Growth | Email and SMS | Build | Marketing | Welcome series, abandoned-cart recovery, order and shipping updates, review requests |
| Growth | Social media marketing | Connect | Marketing | An Instagram calendar: posts, captions and product tags that link to the store |
| Growth | Search and SEO | Build | Marketing | Collection and product pages written to be found |
| Growth | Ads and retargeting | Connect | Marketing | Ads that bring browsers back to the scents they viewed |
| Growth | Reviews and photos | Build | Service | Asks for a review ten days after delivery and shows photo reviews |
| Growth | Loyalty and referrals | Build | Sales | Points on every order and a referral link |
| Sales | CRM | Build | Sales | One profile per customer: orders, emails, chats, returns and favourite scents |
| Operations | Order management | Build | Operations | Every order from the site and Instagram in one queue |
| Operations | Inventory | Build | Operations | Stock for all forty products, moved the moment an order lands |
| Operations | Shipping and fulfilment | Connect | Operations | A fulfilment partner packs and ships from US and Canadian warehouses |
| Operations | Returns | Build | Operations | A 30-day return portal: the label, the refund, and stock back |
| Operations | Tax and accounting sync | Connect | Operations | Sales tax collected at checkout; every order and refund synced to the books |
| Service | Customer experience | Build | Service | One inbox for email, messages and chat, a help centre, and a support agent |
| Run | Analytics | Build | Product | Sales, traffic, campaigns and Maestro's spend on one dashboard |
| Run | Hosting and deploys | Build | Coding | Every change ships as a preview, then to the live store, on ZB Cloud |
| Run | Monitoring and backups | Build | Coding | Uptime checks, alerts and nightly backups |
How it was built
- 1
Playback
Five steps on five models, $0.36 of model usage. Three questions answered: one-off orders now with subscriptions later, wholesale later, and a fulfilment partner for shipping. See Read the playback.
- 2
Scope
The storefront and twenty systems, priced before any work started. See Choose the scope.
- 3
The build
The AI team worked system by system, each in its own channel. Maestro gave every task to the model that does it best. See Work with your AI team.
- 4
Checks
Seventy-nine tasks failed a check and were re-routed to a stronger model. In the abandoned-cart email, for example, a test for Canadian prices failed and only that fix moved to Opus. See Checks and re-routing.
- 5
Launch
The store went live on ZB Cloud with every system connected. See Launch and track.
What it cost
3,559 AI tasks across twelve models, at list prices on 10 October 2026.
| How it ran | Cost |
|---|---|
| Fable, one model for everything | $720.00 |
| Opus, one model for everything | $290.97 |
| ZB Stack, routed by Maestro, with the 5% fee | $29.10 |
Same store. Same work. Hosting on ZB Cloud is charged separately, at the cloud's own price.
After launch
The AI team keeps running the store. Natural next goals for a store like this one: a holiday collection, outreach to gift shops for wholesale, and a scent subscription.