Glady's Books & Wine Bar
A community-rooted bookstore and wine bar that needed a full digital foundation before it could open its doors.
Services
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Product Strategy
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GTM
Opportunity
A brand-ready business with no system to sell
Gladys Books & Wine Bar is a Black woman LGBTQ+-owned bookstore and wine bar launching in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. The brand had identity, community, and a physical space. What it didn't have was any digital infrastructure to support a launch. No storefront. No way to sell books online. No system to capture the community it had already built. The gap wasn't a missing feature; it was a missing foundation. And without one, the physical opening had nothing to convert into revenue.
Diagnosis
Before defining the strategy, I needed to understand what this business actually required to function at launch, not just exist online. I conducted competitive platform analysis, ran 4–6 stakeholder sessions with the client, and mapped the full customer journey to define it.
Three things shaped every decision that followed:
01 — The fulfillment model had to be built into the strategy from the start. A new business couldn't hold inventory, which meant the GTM plan had to account for a dropshipping integration before a single page was designed.
02 — The target customer was community-first, not e-commerce-native. Bed-Stuy locals who already trusted the brand in person needed a frictionless path from discovery to purchase. Complexity would lose them before they converted.
03 — The site had to sell, engage, and build trust at the same time for an audience that had never interacted with the brand digitally. Most launches can lean on existing customer data or brand recognition. Gladys had neither. The digital experience had to establish credibility and convert a first-time audience in the same moment.
Solution
Every decision was made against one question: what does this business need to generate revenue on day one?
5 integrations built · 5-page site architecture · 50+ SKU catalog
Shopify as the core platform because post-handoff ownership had to be simple enough for a small team to maintain without technical support
Ingram CDF via Emersoft as the fulfillment backbone because automating book ordering end-to-end removed the biggest operational risk for a new retailer
A five-section site architecture: Homepage, Shop, About Us, Events, Visit Us—because the customer journey needed a clear path from brand discovery to purchase to community without friction
Email capture built into the homepage because an owned list is the highest-value asset a new retail brand can build before it has any ad spend
Instagram feed connector on the homepage because the brand's social presence was already warm and needed to feed directly into the purchase environment
The Outcome
A system launched as a live, revenue-generating e-commerce platform.
I led this engagement as the founding product manager. Owning the full project scope, PRD, client stakeholder sessions and management, strategy, architecture, GTM, developer coordination, and final delivery.
