Rusty Deer began as a hobby when I was 18, a desire for something more than a 9-to-5. It was built on a passion for creating custom Corten steel art and signage for New Zealanders. As it grew over 8 years, the manual processes that once worked started to break.

Taking custom orders through Facebook messages and emails became a nightmare. Tracking who-ordered-what in messy spreadsheets was a full-time job in itself. As I'm sure you know, it was messy, right?

The tipping point came when I hired a "professional" agency to build a WordPress site. The experience was a disaster.

• The Brief was Ignored: The design was terrible, using the wrong fonts, colours, and tone of voice.
• The Site was Broken: It was clunky, slow, and little things would constantly break, creating a horrible experience for customers.
• The Results Were Devastating: Our conversion rate plummeted from 3% down to less than 0.25%.

I was spending more time fixing the errors made by my expensive web developers than I was running my own business. I knew there had to be a better way.

Our Solution: Building on a Foundation of Trust & Technology

Frustrated, I decided to take complete control. After researching the best platforms for serious e-commerce, the answer was clear: Shopify. While the monthly fee seemed daunting at first, I quickly realised the headaches it would save me were worth 20 times the price.

We rebuilt Rusty Deer from the ground up, focusing on solving the two biggest challenges: complex custom orders and time-wasting manual tasks.

1. A Truly Custom Storefront
The core of Rusty Deer is customization. We needed a way for customers to easily add custom text, choose specific scenes, and understand production timeframes, all without it being a confusing mess. We built a highly advanced, yet simple-to-use product page that allows for deep personalization—a feature that other developers quoted 10s of thousands to build. This gave customers clarity and confidence in their purchase.

2. The 'One-Button' Product Workflow
As we created new custom designs in Adobe Illustrator, a huge bottleneck was the 2-3 hours of tedious work it took to get each new product onto the website with the correct files, images, and pricing.

We solved this by building a custom automation that connects Illustrator directly to Shopify. Now, with the press of a single button, a new design is processed and live on the website in under 30 seconds. This system not only saved hundreds of hours but also eliminated human error.

3. Seamless, "No-Think" Order Fulfillment
We identified and eliminated the manual steps after an order was placed. For example, some of our large BBQ pits require a special shipping pallet. Before, I would have to see the order, then manually email our pallet supplier.

Now, the moment that BBQ is ordered, an email is automatically generated and sent to the pallet company with all the necessary details. It's in their inbox before I've even seen the order. The system just works, giving us complete clarity on where every single order is in the pipeline.

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The Result: Clarity, Efficiency, and Growth.

By combining a clean, custom Shopify theme with smart, targeted automation, we transformed Rusty Deer into a streamlined, million-dollar business. This real-world experience is now the foundation of Blank Slate Co. It means we don't work from theories—we work from hard-won knowledge of what truly succeeds in the New Zealand e-commerce landscape.