How we got Look at This Mug off other people’s platforms and onto one it owns
A business that had proved itself selling through marketplaces, and couldn’t grow any further from inside somebody else’s shopfront. We built the storefront, the tool its customers design in, and the system that runs the work behind it.
Look at This Mug worked. What it couldn’t do was grow. It sold custom printed mugs through Etsy and other marketplaces, which meant selling on terms it didn’t set: its listings looked like everything else on the page, fees came off every sale, and the customer belonged to the platform rather than to the business.
The custom side was sharper. This is a product that has to be seen before it’s bought, sold through a listing that couldn’t show it — one image upload, a line of text, no preview. When what turned up wasn’t what the customer had in mind, it became her problem: a dispute, a refund, a return. It didn’t need to happen often. It was built into the format.
Behind that, the orders themselves. Every one was assembled out of manual records, emails, WhatsApp messages and paper, with the same information copied between them. That was simply how the business had grown, and it took a piece of her day on every single order.
Look at This Mug had nowhere of its own to sell from, no way to keep the customers it had earned, and no system of its own for running the work.
Most people arrive with the solution already half-formed. Debbie wanted a site of her own, and a visualiser: a way for customers to see their design before they ordered.
The discovery calls were about how the business actually ran — what it could print, where its customers’ expectations kept coming apart, and what Debbie was trying to build under her own name.
A visualiser would have fixed one of those, and it could have been built for her rather than for them: the customer sends a photo, she applies it, sends back a picture, waits for a yes. The gap closes one exchange at a time, with her in the middle of every one.
We proposed the opposite. Put the design tool in the customer’s hands. It closes the gap at the point of sale rather than after it, and it gives Look at This Mug something no listing can offer — which is the whole point when you’re going out under your own name.
She hadn’t known that was possible. She didn’t arrive with a specification, and she didn’t need one.
We built Look at This Mug a storefront of its own, brand and design included, selling direct rather than through a marketplace. Customers have accounts, order history, and can reorder without starting again. The relationship belongs to the business now.
The configurator is the centre of it. A customer can upload several images, add text and icons, and arrange them however they like, where a listing gave them one image and a line of text. Its limits are the limits of what the business can actually produce — worked out with Debbie, and tested — so nobody can design something she can’t make. What they approve on screen is what arrives.
The design leaves the configurator ready to print, with nothing to prepare, and Debbie approves every one before it goes. It’s saved once, as data rather than a file to keep track of, so it turns up on the order, goes back to the customer, drops into an email, and is still there a year later if they want the same mug again.
Behind the site, orders run on one screen — a board they move across as the work progresses, from submitted to posted. Postage and customer emails happen in the same place. What used to be manual records, email, WhatsApp and paper is now the system and her inbox.
Orders are up [X%]. Customers are happier, because they can see what they’re buying before they order it. And an order that used to be pieced together across [X] different places now runs in one system.
Look at This Mug sells from its own site, under its own name, to its own customers — on a platform built to carry more than mugs. A catalogue, or T-shirts configured the same way, is an addition rather than a rebuild.
“I came in with an idea of what I thought I needed. The guys at Clear Approach took the time to understand how I actually work and what my customers were struggling with, and what came back was better than what I’d asked for. People can see exactly what they’re getting before they order now, and I’m not spending my evenings chasing an order around my emails and bits of paper.”