ML Commerce

The challenge

The Merch Labs makes printed and personalised merchandise for grassroots sports clubs and supporters' groups: tees, hoodies, mugs, keyrings, phone cases, car signs and more. It runs an online shop for each client, and every one of those shops was a separate WooCommerce store.

That meant products set up separately in each store, and orders spread across a different admin for every client. The Merch Labs wanted one platform it owned, which could run every client's shop without each one being its own website to maintain.

What we built

We built ML Commerce: one platform that serves every client shop. Each shop keeps its own domain, and the platform reskins itself from the domain it's asked for, with the club's colours, logo, fonts, menus and sponsors.

Products are defined once in a master catalogue. Each shop lists them with its own name, price, images, personalisation and choice of variants, and anything it doesn't override is inherited. A new kit range or product is set up once and offered to as many shops as need it.

Shop pages are built in the admin from sections, such as heroes, product grids, image and text, tiles and sponsor logos. There are seven templates to choose from, each with its own colours, fonts, light or dark mode and corner style, plus autosaved drafts and a live preview before anything is published. Every product and page has its own SEO fields, and each domain gets its own sitemap.

Checkout runs through Stripe, with delivery options, donations and each shop's own card statement name. Each shop sends branded order, dispatch and refund emails from its own mailbox. Behind it all, one admin covers the catalogue, orders, customers, stock, production, reports and email campaigns across every shop, and a club can approve a new product before it goes on sale.

To move each existing shop across without losing anything, we wrote importers that bring over WooCommerce products, categories, pages, orders and customers. Storefront URLs match WooCommerce's, so existing links and search rankings carried over when each domain moved.

• Many shops on one platform, each on its own domain and brand
• Master catalogue with per-shop names, prices, images and variants
• Section-based page builder with drafts and live preview
• Seven templates, from Classic and Studio to Stadium and Clubhouse
• Stripe Checkout with delivery options and donations
• Branded order, dispatch and refund emails per shop
• One admin for catalogue, orders, stock, production and reports
• Product approval by the club before a listing goes live
• Private, password-protected categories for members' ranges
• Per-shop SEO, sitemaps and structured data
• WooCommerce importers for products, orders and customers

The outcome

Since going live in September 2026, The Merch Labs has run its client shops from one platform and one admin. A product is set up once rather than once per store, orders from every shop arrive in one place, and a new club shop starts from a template rather than a new WordPress install.