I joined the Alexander Marchant project about halfway through the design phase in late 2023. The project was running a little behind schedule, which isn't altogether unusual, but it set the tone for what would become one of my most informative experiences about modern web development.
Alexander Marchant sells luxurious home goods. We're talking astoundingly beautiful pieces like marble bathtubs that cost more than many cars. Their primary customers are interior designers working on million-dollar home renovations and remodels. These aren't casual shoppers browsing for a soap dish. These are professionals who need to see every finish option for a brass pull, every variation of a fixture, every possible configuration.
The challenge was interesting. These interior designers weren't always necessarily buying directly through the website. They were also using it as a tool, a way to track and plan what goods they wanted to specify for their projects. So we needed to build something that worked as both a resource for professionals and an e-commerce platform that could convert when the opportunity arose. And we also needed to appeal to direct consumers too, because, of course,why leave that audience on the table?
We built the site on WordPress with an innovative design and a robust blog on the front end. Bravo powered the commerce system. If you navigate from the marketing side to the e-commerce side, there's a bit of a disconnect between the two platforms, but that's the reality of working with separate systems.
Here's what surprised me: how quickly we could build in 2024. Even building without AI assistance, the WordPress toolset had evolved to the point where we were getting features out the door faster than I'd ever experienced in my many years managing development teams. This was one of the few projects in my career where we were actually able to build more features than the client originally imagined. We pared back some of the features at launch and then allowed them to introduce them later when they needed them.
That was a genuine learning experience for me. I'd never been able to over-deliver to that degree in what appeared at the outset of my involvement as such limited time. It challenged my assumptions about project scoping and what's actually possible with the right tools. The speed at which one developer could iterate was revelatory.
They have showrooms in Austin and other parts of Texas, as well as in Oklahoma. They're a small operation with big ambitions, trying to compete in a space dominated by larger players with more resources. Alexander Marchant is easy to root for.
This project taught me it's not just about building a beautiful website. It's about creating systems that scale with the complexity of their business while remaining operable by a small team. The former challenge of many e-commerce projects is that they're never really finished or they will never have the proper people to support them as they scale. They evolve as the business evolves.