Clyde Butcher Galleries
$150,000+ in annual savings, for a client we worked with since 2016
Jackie Butcher, CEO, and Robert Obendorf, CTO. A world-renowned fine art gallery in the Everglades that went from paper-tracked collectors and daily post office runs to a fully automated digital operation running on a four-day work week.
The Problem
We've worked with the Butcher family since 2016, and even in the early days, the gap between their reputation and their internal operations was striking. This is a world-renowned gallery and hospitality business in the Everglades, but behind the scenes, the day-to-day ran on manual work that hadn't kept pace with their success.
Shipping labels were created one at a time on the UPS website. Marketing leads came in on paper. Customer data moved between the website and their email marketing system through manual CSV exports, a slow process prone to mistakes. Their most valuable collectors, the kind spending $15,000 or more on a single piece, were tracked on paper with no automated way to follow up with them. And every single day, a staff member had to physically drive packages to the post office, because there was no integrated pickup system in place.
None of this matched the caliber of the business. A gallery with global recognition was still running its operations like a small local shop, and every hour spent on manual logistics was an hour not spent on the art, the collectors, or the guests.
The Solution
We re-engineered the business around a headless architecture, prioritizing speed and independence at every layer. First, we rebuilt the digital storefront from the ground up, separating the front-end experience from the back-end logic entirely. That gave the gallery a site that loads fast, scales easily, and never gets held back by the systems running behind it.
Next, we built a custom Collector Certificate generator and database, integrated directly with their email marketing platform, so the marketing side of the business became autonomous. High-value collectors are now recognized automatically and followed up with, without anyone having to remember to do it. On the logistics side, we built a dynamic shipping engine that calculates live rates at checkout and generates shipping labels automatically. That one change meant the gallery could finally schedule daily UPS pickups directly, removing the post office run from the daily routine entirely.
And beyond the systems themselves, Robert mentored Robert Obendorf into the role of permanent CTO, so the family gained not just new technology, but lasting technical leadership they'll always own.
The Tech Stack
The art behind the infrastructure
Headless Storefront
WordPress + WooCommerce + Next.js
A fast, independent website front-end, fully decoupled from the backend, so the site never slows down as the gallery grows.
Automated Certificate Generator
Custom-built + Google Sheets
Collector certificates that used to be made by hand and tracked in Excel now generate automatically the moment an order is placed.
Marketing Automations
WooCommerce + Zapier + iContact
Purchases automatically flow into the gallery's marketing platform, so high-value collectors are recognized and followed up with, without manual entry.
Live Checkout Shipping Rates
UPS API + WooCommerce
Live-calculated shipping rates at checkout, no guessing and no flat-rate estimates. This was rare for a business this size in 2016. Now it's standard, but Clyde Butcher had it years ahead of most.
Instant Shipping Labels
WooCommerce + ShippingEasy
Staff purchase and print shipping labels instantly from their own system, without a separate trip to UPS.
Vacation Rental Booking
WooCommerce Bookings
Beyond the gallery, guests can book the Everglades cottages and bungalows directly online, with real-time availability, not a phone call.
The Results
Automation that became part of the DNA
$150,000+
Annual return delivered and growing
1 employee's worth of time
Saved in the very first year alone
Began in 2016
A trusted long term partnership