The Challenge
Quinn & Co. Design faced a problem familiar to many interior design firms: tracking hundreds of furniture orders across dozens of vendors for multiple client projects was becoming unmanageable.
For each project, designers were juggling orders from 10-20 different vendors (West Elm, Pottery Barn, Restoration Hardware, and more). Each vendor had their own order numbers, tracking systems, and email formats. When a sofa shipped from one vendor and a chair arrived from another, designers had to manually check dozens of email inboxes, copy tracking numbers into spreadsheets, update delivery statuses by hand, and keep clients informed about arrivals.
A single project could involve 50+ items, and designers were managing 5-10 projects at once. This meant spending 5-10 hours per week just processing vendor emails and updating spreadsheets. Worse, important updates often slipped through the cracks. A delayed sofa might not be caught until a client asked about it.
The manual process wasn't just time-consuming; it made it hard to give clients accurate, up-to-date information about their projects.
The Solution
We built a custom web application that transforms how Quinn & Co. tracks and manages furniture orders, combining automated email processing, intelligent shipment tracking, and client transparency into one seamless system.
The application works like having a dedicated assistant who reads every vendor email, extracts the important information, matches it to the right project items, and updates everything automatically. Designers can see the status of every item across all projects in real-time.
When a shipping confirmation arrives from West Elm, the system reads it, identifies what type of email it is, pulls out key details like tracking numbers and delivery dates, and matches it to the correct furniture item in the database. All of this happens without any human intervention.
For tracking updates, the system integrates with Shippo to monitor packages in real-time. When a carrier updates a package's location, the system automatically updates the item's status. Designers always have current information without checking tracking websites manually.
Clients also get their own personalized view of their project through private links, where they can see photos of items, delivery status, and estimated arrival dates without seeing internal details like costs or vendor information.
AI Architecture
The system uses AI in several powerful ways. When vendor emails arrive, AI analyzes the content to determine what type of email it is (order confirmation, shipping notification, delay notice, or something else). This happens in seconds with over 85% accuracy.
Once classified, the AI reads through the email content, even messy, unstructured vendor emails, and extracts specific information like order numbers, tracking numbers, carrier names, and delivery dates.
The AI then figures out which furniture item in the database the email is about. It compares the extracted data against the database, assigns confidence scores, and either auto-updates high-confidence matches or flags uncertain ones for quick human review.
We built a cost-optimized approach: simple emails use pattern matching with no AI needed, complex emails use a faster model first, and only escalate to more powerful models when needed. This keeps processing costs to about $0.02 per email.
The Results
What used to take designers 5-10 hours per week now takes about 1 hour. The AI processes most emails automatically, and designers only review uncertain matches or unusual situations. This translates to 15-20 hours saved per month per designer.
Before the system, project status was only as current as the last time someone manually checked emails. Now, items are updated within minutes of carrier status changes, giving designers and clients accurate, real-time information.
The system handles an average of 100-150 vendor emails per day across all projects, automatically processing about 85% of them with zero human intervention. The remaining 15% are flagged for quick review, usually taking just 30 seconds to approve or adjust.
By replacing expensive project management subscriptions and third-party tracking services, Quinn & Co. also reduced their monthly software costs while getting significantly better functionality.
This system fundamentally changed how Quinn & Co. Design manages projects. Instead of being reactive, waiting for clients to ask about items and scrambling to find information, designers are now proactive. They can see at a glance which items are delayed across all projects and reach out to clients before problems become surprises. Most importantly, the system scales: as they take on more projects, the AI handles the increased volume without requiring more staff time.
Client Feedback
Quinn & Co. Design