Rhino LED Lights
Rhino LED Lights sells the same products two very different ways: direct to consumers, and through a dealer network on negotiated pricing. Both were running on a store platform that could not be bent any further. We rebuilt the storefront and the operational tooling around it, and kept fifteen years of order history exactly where it was.
Rhino LED Lights had outgrown the off-the-shelf store it started on. Consumer orders, dealer pricing, vehicle-specific products, returns and the day-to-day admin work all had to be forced into a platform that was never designed for the way the business actually sells.
The obvious fix - start over somewhere new - meant walking away from fifteen years of orders, customers and product data that the business still uses every day to answer support questions, handle warranty claims and process reorders.
In the meantime staff filled the gaps by hand: working out dealer pricing manually, handling returns over email, and going hunting whenever they needed to understand what was actually happening in the business.
The old platform held every order, customer and product record the business had built up. Instead of migrating away and losing it, the new system reads and writes the same data - so nothing had to be thrown away or parked in a read-only archive nobody can use.
Consumer checkout and dealer ordering behave differently: different prices, different minimums, different expectations. Both live in the same store, so there are not two systems to keep in step with each other.
Vehicle compatibility, kits and configurable builds are part of the catalog itself. Customers pick their vehicle and see what fits, instead of cross-referencing a chart before they can buy.
The platform has been extended steadily since March 2022 as the business changed - dealer settings, returns, component inventory, the desktop ordering app. Work gets released as it is needed rather than saved up for another rebuild.
Show us how you sell today - retail, dealer, custom orders, returns - and we will tell you what could sensibly run in one system, and what your existing data means for that.
The platform is a Laravel application built as an overlay on the client's existing CS-Cart installation. It shares the legacy database schema rather than migrating away from it, which is what preserves the historical order, customer and product data while everything customer-facing and operational is served by modern Laravel code, Livewire components and a custom admin.
A hard cut to a new platform would have required a full data migration and a period where the business could not answer questions about past orders. Reading and writing the existing schema removed that risk entirely: the storefront, checkout, dealer pricing, returns and analytics are all new, while historical data stays authoritative and continuously available.
Multi-step checkout wizard built with Livewire for real-time updates. Stripe Payment Intents, saved payment methods, shipping rate calculation, insurance options and order validation.
Full order lifecycle management with status tracking, order history, admin order creation, draft orders, packing slips, email notifications and order analytics.
Product management with variations, features, options, vehicle compatibility, a product configurator, "What's Included" content, installation instructions and SEO fields.
Cart system with real-time updates via Livewire, cart persistence, abandoned cart tracking, cart history, frequently bought together suggestions and dealer pricing calculations.
Shop by vehicle make and model with product matching, vehicle-specific kits, stage-based configuration and compatibility checking against a vehicle database.
Product search with analytics tracking, search history, search-to-pin functionality, category filtering and real-time suggestions.
Dealer account management with custom pricing tiers, separate core and accessory discount percentages, minimum order amounts, dealer settings and automatic price calculation.
REST API built with Laravel Sanctum for authentication. Product listings, order management, payment methods, shipping rates and support for the dealer desktop application.
Payment method storage using Stripe Setup Intents. Multiple cards, primary payment method selection, expiration tracking and checkout integration.
Return Merchandise Authorization workflow with status tracking, image uploads, staff notes, customer comments, PDF generation for packing slips and return forms, shipping label generation and tracking number management.
Repair tracking integrated with the RMA workflow. Repair status, technician assignment, repair notes and customer communication through the repair process.
Session-based analytics tracking user paths, page views, time on page, entry and exit points, common paths, drop-off analysis and UTM parameters.
Checkout funnel tracking with step-by-step analytics, button press tracking, page visit tracking and cart abandonment analysis.
Customer management with order history, cart tracking, search history, customer impersonation for support and detailed customer profiles.
A complete Laravel overlay on top of CS-Cart, maintaining database compatibility while providing modern application architecture, a rebuilt front end and features the base platform does not offer.
Laravel Sanctum API authentication, payment processing via Stripe, encrypted credential storage and role-based access control across the admin and dealer surfaces.
Livewire drives UI updates without page refreshes in checkout, cart, the customer dashboard and the admin interfaces, which keeps state on the server and avoids a separate front-end application.
Journey, funnel, search and customer analytics are recorded in the application's own database, so the business can answer questions about its own traffic without depending on a third-party dashboard.
Work is integrated, tested and deployed continuously rather than batched into occasional releases, which is what allows features to land when the business needs them instead of at the end of a project cycle.
Features are built, put in front of real users and refined based on how they are actually used, rather than specified up front and shipped once.
Established the Laravel wrapper architecture around CS-Cart. Built the checkout with Stripe integration, product catalog management, shopping cart, order processing and the first admin tools.
Dealer management with custom pricing tiers, the REST API with Laravel Sanctum, the RMA workflow, the customer showcase upload system, vehicle-based shopping and analytics tracking.
Livewire 3 for real-time updates, an improved checkout experience, better mobile responsiveness, a refined admin dashboard and database query optimization.
Desktop application API integration, advanced dealer settings, a component inventory system, improved saved payment methods, checkout analytics and customer management tooling.
If any of that sounded like your business, this is the service it falls under.
Most owners already know exactly where their software gets in the way. Start there, and we will work out whether it needs replacing, extending, or connecting to something else.