Equiptech Automotive
A storefront and a command center for a national equipment supplier.
Equiptech Automotive supplies diagnostic tools, vehicle lifts and service equipment to garages across South Africa. We rebuilt their website as a fast, quote-led store and gave the team a back office of their own, the Command Center, so every enquiry, order, page and newsletter is handled in one place.
16
back-office modules replacing a stack of plugins and spreadsheets
- Client
- Equiptech Automotive
- Engagement
- Client project
- Our role
- Strategy, design, engineering and launch
- Built with
- React, TanStack Start, Supabase, Vercel
A serious supplier, held back by its tools.
Equiptech has supplied professional automotive equipment since 2003. Their customers are independent garages, dealer service centres and panel shops, and most big purchases start with a conversation rather than a checkout button. A lift or an ADAS calibration rig is quoted, not added to a cart.
The old setup didn't reflect that. The website, the enquiries, the follow-ups, the content and the courier bookings each lived somewhere different, held together by plugins, inboxes and spreadsheets. The brief was to replace all of it with one system the team would enjoy using, and a storefront that looked as professional as the equipment it sells.
What it had to do
- 01Capture every quote request with the details needed to price it.
- 02Follow up on sent quotes without relying on anyone's memory.
- 03Let staff change the website themselves, safely.
- 04Price and book courier deliveries without working them out by hand.
- 05Keep customers, newsletters and SEO in the same place as the sales pipeline.
The site, top to bottom
Keep scrolling to walk the whole page.
A full-length capture of the live home page, exactly as a visitor sees it on a desktop.
equiptech.vercel.app(opens in a new tab)
A storefront for customers, a command center for the team.
Two halves of one system, sharing the same data. What staff change in the back office appears on the website straight away, and what customers do on the website lands in the back office with nothing copied by hand.
01
The storefront
Quote-led catalogue
Shop by category or by brand, with every product set to either “Quote only” or “Add to cart”. Prices stay off the product cards, because that is how this trade buys.
Request a quote
A structured quote form on every product, capturing the equipment, quantity, location and whether the customer wants rental finance.
Cart and checkout
For smaller items, a full checkout with live Courier Guy delivery rates and free delivery on orders of R5 000 or more.
Brand and content pages
Brand pages, services, rentals and leasing, an installation gallery, a video library and a blog with the old articles brought across.
02
The Command Center
Quote pipeline and CRM
Every enquiry becomes a quote with a stage, an owner and notes. A drag-and-drop pipeline board, and a contact record that builds itself from each request.
Page builder
Pages are built from ready-made sections that match the brand. Staff edit words and pictures, save a draft, preview it, then publish.
Newsletters
A campaign builder that pulls in products and guides, sends a test to your own inbox first, then sends now or on a schedule, with per-recipient receipts.
SEO hub
A Google-readiness score for every product, article and page, with each failing check explained in plain English. AI drafts meta titles and descriptions on request.
Orders and waybills
Online orders with VAT, delivery and payment status. One click books the collection with Courier Guy and stores the waybill and tracking number.
Built-in help
An AI assistant that knows the Command Center and answers staff questions with click-by-click steps, kept up to date with every new feature.
Every module in the Command Center
16 modules · one login
- 01Dashboard
- 02Analytics
- 03Orders
- 04Pages
- 05Quote requests
- 06Pipeline
- 07Contacts
- 08Products
- 09Media & assets
- 10Blogs & articles
- 11SEO hub
- 12Newsletters
- 13Users & settings
- 14Product reviews
- 15Change log
- 16Help
One database, two front doors.
Customers and staff use different screens, but everything reads from and writes to the same place. Integrations run on the server, so passwords and API keys never reach a browser.
- 01
Customers
Phone or desktop
- Browse and search
- Request a quote
- Checkout
- Join the newsletter
- 02
Website
TanStack Start · Vercel
- Server-rendered pages
- Catalogue and brand pages
- Pages from the page builder
- Articles and videos
- 03
Data
Supabase · client-owned
- Products and pages
- Quotes, contacts, orders
- Roles and audit log
- Private documents
- 04
Command Center
Staff only
- Pipeline and CRM
- Page builder
- Newsletters and SEO
- Orders and waybills
- 05
Connected
Server-side
- Courier Guy
- PayFast and PayJustNow
- Resend email
- AI assistant
The life of a quote request
- Step 1
A garage asks
A customer opens a vehicle lift on their phone and requests a quote, ticking that they're interested in finance.
- Step 2
The system files it
The request is saved, the customer's contact record is created or updated, and the team gets an email alert.
- Step 3
The team quotes
Staff open it in the Command Center, attach the quote document, add notes and move it to “Quoted” on the pipeline.
- Step 4
Nobody forgets
If a quote sits in “Quoted” for three days, the customer automatically receives one friendly follow-up email.
- Step 5
The deal closes
Won or lost, the outcome feeds the dashboard's 90-day win rate and 12-week trend, so the owner sees the pipeline at a glance.
What changed for the team.
The numbers below come from the build itself. The system is launching, so we'll add trading results once there's a fair period to measure.
- 16back-office modules
Quotes, pipeline, contacts, pages, products, media, articles, SEO, newsletters, orders, reviews and more, behind one login instead of a stack of plugins and spreadsheets.
- 3 daysto an automatic follow-up
Sent quotes are chased by the system on a schedule, so following up no longer depends on anyone's memory.
- 37.8 → 9.4 MBproduct photo weight
The full product photo library was recompressed with no change to file names, and new uploads are converted to WebP automatically.
The decisions you don't see.
The data belongs to Equiptech
The system runs on Equiptech's own Supabase project, not ours. Database changes ship as reviewed SQL migrations, so there's a clear record of every change to the structure.
Permissions enforced by the database
Sign-in is invite-only, with Admin, Editor and Viewer roles. The rules live in the database itself (row-level security), so a mistake in a screen can't expose data.
A history that can't be rewritten
Every change to products, pages, settings and reviews is recorded with who, when and which fields changed. Records are immutable and can be filtered and exported to CSV.
Private by default
Quote documents sit in a private bucket and are only reachable through links that expire after ten minutes. Courier and payment credentials are stored server-side and never shown on the public site.
Work that runs on a schedule
Scheduled jobs send quote follow-ups and queued newsletters. Payment notifications from PayFast and PayJustNow are received and verified by dedicated endpoints.
Ready for AI assistants
The catalogue is exposed through a secure Model Context Protocol (MCP) server, so staff can search products and specifications from an AI assistant after signing in.
Stack
- ReactInterface
- TanStack StartServer rendering and server functions
- SupabasePostgres, auth, storage and row-level security
- VercelHosting and scheduled jobs
- Courier GuyLive rates, collections and waybills
- PayFast · PayJustNowCard and pay-later payments
- ResendNewsletters, alerts and follow-ups
Services involved
Have a business that's outgrown its tools? Let's talk it through.
Tell us what you're running on today and where it hurts. We'll come back with a few questions and, if it's a good fit, a fixed proposal.
Fixed proposal before any work begins · You own the code