Lubbock Coolers
A direct-to-consumer storefront for a custom cooler business I founded, built around a configurator that lets customers preview their order before purchase.
Background
I started painting custom coolers for events like annual formals, gifts, and more in Lubbock in March 2025, taking orders by text and on Instagram. Customer demand was there, but our process wasn't built to support it. Each sale required days of messaging clarifying unclear ideas, all with tight deadlines.
I own product strategy, customer experience, and daily operations, so I built the site to solve a real business problem which was making the customization process more efficient and reducing the need for back-and-forth with every customer.
That ownership runs end-to-end: pricing, artwork approval, published lead times, and final quality approval across 14 custom orders to date. Those orders generated $2,800 at roughly $205 per unit, with 68% coming through referrals. Before the site existed, I handled most of these orders manually, which became the baseline for what I wanted the storefront to improve
Fourteen custom orders sold, with every iteration since launch prioritized from customer feedback or funnel data.
Understanding the problem
Every order began with the same friction. Customers wanted a painted cooler but could not clearly communicate what they were visualizing on their own, so each sale required days of photos and communication gaps over text. Based on customer feedback, I noticed three major areas of improvement:
- Uncertainty was the primary objection, not price. Customers could not picture their own design on the product.
- Timelines were usually tight, and extensive communication regarding what the customer was actually envisioning was taking up valuable time
- Quoting was an issue. Painting one lid and painting all five panels and four corners are very different jobs, and pricing each order by hand did not scale and was never exactly accurate
Product vision and solution
From those findings I set three goals for the product:
- A customer should see their own artwork on the product before paying.
- Price should be transparent and update as the customer builds the order.
- I should be able to fulfill an order without a single message exchanged.
The result is a storefront built around the design studio. Customers select a template or upload their own artwork per panel, rotate a 3D model to evaluate it, and watch the price and sides update in real time, removing the uncertainty when it was time to purchase.
Defining the MVP
I kept the first version focused on the most important customer decisions
- Preview before payment: The objection was always about what the final product would look like. Answering it on the page with minimal clicks and the ability to upload images directly removed days of back-and-forth.
- Priced per panel: Customers can order just one side instead of paying for the whole cooler upfront. A five-side wrap becomes the higher-end option
- Proof of past work: A gallery of finished coolers painted by me, so customers have confidence that their design will be up to their standards.
Running it like a business
Once orders became consistent, two gaps made pricing difficult to pin down because I couldn’t tell which channels were driving customers or calculate a reliable material cost per unit.
So I built a four-person cross-functional team across growth, supply chain, community, and content, with clear responsibilities and pay tied to each role. This gave me a clearer view of acquisition costs and true cost per unit. With both numbers in place, I raised the price from $205 to $260, a 27% increase that allowed us to source coolers directly while maintaining our unit margin.
Measuring the funnel
I instrumented the site to measure where users drop out. Most visitors never reach the studio at all, and among those who do, uploading their own artwork slightly outpaces choosing a template. Site conversion sits at a 4.8% baseline. I also launched a post-order survey, incentivized with a $5 credit after checkout, which reached a 60% response rate. Respondents named template selection as the most-cited friction point in the design flow, independently validating the behavioral data.
The next iteration will be: fewer, stronger templates and a clearer path from the homepage into the studio.