codewrights
Menu

INSIDE THE WORK / 002

From first inquiry to final photos.
One studio. One app.

A small studio with the client experience of a much larger firm.

MH Build Studio designs and fabricates custom furniture, interiors and event builds near Chicago, and rents a collection of its own pieces. One app carries each job from the public site’s inquiry form through quote, signature, build and delivery, with the client following along from a private link.

MH Build StudioBoutique business app · Custom woodwork & event fabrication
8stages, inquiry to delivered
7build milestones clients follow
0passwords a client ever needs

Live since June 2026
mhbuildstudio.com ↗

01 / WHAT CONNECTS TO WHAT

Eight jobs a studio usually rents.
One app that does them.

Each of these is normally its own product with its own login and its own copy of the customer. Here they share one record of the job, so nothing is retyped between the inquiry and the receipt.

WHAT THIS APP STANDS IN FOR · TOOL CATEGORIES
  • Storefront builder
  • Inquiry form tool
  • Quote documents
  • E-signature service
  • Shared photo folders
  • Customer spreadsheet
  • Email marketing tool
  • Analytics script
MH BUILD STUDIO · ONE RECORD OF THE JOB
Outside services we runDomain + DNSHosting + releasesEmail delivery + inbound repliesGoogle sign-in for staffFile storage
Capabilities in the appProjects + stagesVersioned quotesCatalog + rental inventoryContacts, de-duplicatedOne email thread per projectMailing list + consentFirst-party analytics
Screens people usePublic site + collectionClient portalPrivate quote pageSales + build boardsIn-app handbook
What the studio getsAn inquiry becomes a projectA quote gets signedThe client follows the buildPast clients hear what’s new

02 / WORKFLOWS & EXCEPTIONS

Five paths through the studio’s week.

Each path is written down with its steps and its awkward case. The exception is part of the design, with an owner and an outcome.

  1. An inquiry becomes a project

    A form on the public site lands as a project with a contact, a location and an alert. Nobody retypes it.

    1. A visitor chooses Rent or Custom. Rental pieces are offered from live inventory, and the event ZIP is required.
    2. Spam checks run first: a hidden trap field, a timing check, length caps and a limit per address.
    3. The contact is matched by email, then phone. An existing record is filled in only where it was blank.
    4. The ZIP becomes a city and a distance from the studio, so the team sees where the event is at a glance.
    5. The team gets an alert. The client gets a confirmation that invites photos by reply.

    When it doesn’t go to plan

    A lead outside the service radius is flagged, never blocked: the studio decides, not the form. If an email fails to send, the lead is still saved. An inquiry with no movement gets a stale warning at 21 days, closes as lost at 30, and can be reopened.

  2. A quote gets signed

    The client approves with a signature drawn on their phone. The studio gets a frozen record of exactly what was agreed.

    1. Staff build the quote from line items, or start from a product’s recipe of templated lines and costs.
    2. They preview the email, then send. Sending freezes that version and supersedes any earlier one.
    3. The client opens a private link and enters a short PIN. No account, no password.
    4. They approve by drawing a signature, or request changes or decline with a note.
    5. A signed quote produces a branded PDF and a receipt, and the team is told.

    When it doesn’t go to plan

    Approval and signature save together or not at all: an empty or broken signature rolls the approval back. A stale tab or a double submit is told the quote is no longer awaiting a response. Changes never edit a sent quote; they start a new draft from the frozen one.

  3. The client follows the build

    One private page answers “how is it going?” so the shop floor doesn’t have to.

    1. When a project is booked it receives seven default build milestones.
    2. The shop ticks them off on the build board as work moves.
    3. The client’s portal shows the stage, the dates and the same timeline, read-only.
    4. Photos the studio shares are grouped: inspiration, build and install, final, plans.
    5. The client can add their own photos and PDFs from the same page.

    When it doesn’t go to plan

    Internal costs live on their own tab and never render on a client-facing screen. Phone photos arrive in formats browsers can’t show; they are converted and thumbnailed, so a gallery never pulls camera originals over a phone connection.

  4. Every email stays with its project

    The conversation lives on the job, not in whoever’s inbox it happened to reach.

    1. Each project has its own reply address, and its emails thread together in the client’s inbox.
    2. The client replies from their normal email, attachments included.
    3. The reply is picked up automatically and lands on the project’s Messages tab.
    4. The team is emailed that there is something to read.

    When it doesn’t go to plan

    Mail from an address that isn’t on the project is never attached to it, so a stranger can’t write themselves into a job. Attachments are limited to photos and PDFs, with sensible size limits. A message that can’t be matched to a project is set aside instead of bouncing back at the client.

  5. Past clients hear what’s new

    An occasional update to people who asked for one, sent from the same app that knows who they are.

    1. Past clients can be imported to the list with a dry-run preview first.
    2. The owner picks a segment and writes one email.
    3. Each recipient gets an individual message with their own unsubscribe link.
    4. Consent is checked again at the moment of sending, not only when the list was built.

    When it doesn’t go to plan

    Each recipient is recorded as sent, so trying again after a hiccup never emails anyone twice. Someone who unsubscribed is never re-added by a later import.

03 / ACCEPTANCE CRITERIA

What had to be true before it counted as done.

Specific conditions the business can see for itself. Most of them are about the day something goes wrong.

  1. Clients never need an account or a password. A private link and a PIN open exactly their project.
  2. A sent quote never changes. Revisions are new versions, and the signed one is the one on the receipt.
  3. An approval without a valid signature cannot exist.
  4. Submitting the same inquiry again updates the contact. It never duplicates it or overwrites what staff entered.
  5. An out-of-area lead is flagged for a person to decide. The form never turns business away.
  6. A failed email never loses a lead.
  7. Internal costs never appear on a client-facing screen.
  8. Marketing email reaches only people who consented, checked at send time, once each.
  9. Every public page reads cleanly to search engines and AI assistants, down to each piece in the collection.
  10. A shared link to a piece unfurls with its photo in a text message.
  11. The portal, the quote and the unsubscribe page all work one-handed on a phone.
  12. Text stays readable for everyone: contrast meets accessibility guidelines across the brand palette.
  13. Analytics keeps no IP addresses, full URLs or ad identifiers, and the privacy page says so.

WHAT WE LOOK AFTER

A rebrand and a domain move,
without re-explaining the business.

In August 2026 the studio took a new name and turned toward event planners and corporate clients. The name, domain, palette and type all changed through the same app. Every old address still leads to the right page, so the links past clients had saved, and everything search engines had learned about the studio, carried over to the new name.

The owner’s side gets the same care as the client’s: a handbook inside the app, staff sign-in against an approved list, and production errors recorded for us to find before the studio does.

Built and operated by Codewrights. Counts describe the software as it ran on 20 September 2026: stages from the project workflow, milestones from the build defaults.

START WITH A CONVERSATION

Tell us what the business runs on today.

The tools, the workarounds, the things that fall through. We’ll tell you what we would build, what we would keep and what we would leave alone.

Start a conversationhello@codewrights.io