Designed By Gi: Client Portal for a Merch Design Studio

The problem

Designed By Gi creates merch collections and runs online stores for dozens of dance studios. Every collection follows a fixed timeline: a design form six weeks before launch, designs delivered a week before, then the launch.

Design forms went out as emailed links, contracts lived in a separate tool, and studios had to email the DBG team to check dates, documents and sales.

What we built

A branded client portal on Softr and Airtable at mydbgportal.com. Each studio signs in to its own dashboard showing what needs attention, the next launch, upcoming dates and a button straight to its store.

Design forms, priority releases and store build outs are filled in inside the portal and land in Designed By Gi's Airtable base, while contracts are signed with SignWell and store sales sync from Shopify every hour.

• Studio dashboard with Needs attention, the next launch and a link to the studio's store
• Launch schedule where an approved date change moves the form, due and delivery dates
• New Collection Design form with a DBG Staples picker that shows favorites first
• Priority release requests and store build-out packages with add-ons
• Wholesale catalogs and print-on-demand partners in one place
• Contracts, order confirmations and billing authorizations signed with SignWell
• Store sales synced hourly from each studio's Shopify store
• Studio messages, with a shared Studio Inbox for the DBG team

How we built it

Each page is a custom React block in Softr that reads and writes Designed By Gi's existing Airtable base, so the team kept working in Airtable while studios got a portal.

Airtable automations carry the logic: the hourly Shopify order sync, launch date changes, Monday-only order extensions with a last call, and notifications to the DBG team.

Privacy filters keep each studio to its own records, and Softr's user sync follows a No Portal Access flag on the client record.