An online store: from a supplier spreadsheet to a launch plan
Two founders, twenty-four products and six weeks. One notebook where the catalogue, the delivery rules and the decisions live together.
Oleg and Dasha make ceramic tableware in a rented workshop and sell it at markets. In six weeks the autumn season starts, and they want an online store by then. They have a spreadsheet with 24 products, 180 photos on Dasha’s phone, four competitor sites in bookmarks and a chat where a friend once explained how returns work in their country. Oleg thinks twelve products are enough for launch. Dasha wants the whole catalogue.
They have had this conversation three times. Each time it ends with “okay, let’s decide next week”, and next week neither of them remembers what the other agreed to.
The argument gets a room of its own
The first thing that changes is where the argument lives. Oleg’s small launch and Dasha’s full catalogue become two branches in the same notebook, each with its own list of what it needs and its own costs. For the first time they are comparing the same things: weeks of work, money up front, what breaks when the second batch arrives.
It takes one evening to see that they were never really disagreeing about the number of products. Oleg was worried about the checkout. Dasha was worried about having to rebuild the catalogue in spring. Both worries were right.
A plan that is half his and half hers
The launch plan they end up with has the three-step checkout from Oleg’s branch and the category structure from Dasha’s. Twelve products go live in the first batch, but the catalogue is built to take 300. Next to each line of the plan there is a link to the branch it came from and the comment where it was settled.
The friend’s chat about returns becomes a short note with a source. The four competitor sites become four notes with one sentence each about what to copy and what not to. The 180 photos become 24, one per product, with “shadow on the mug” comments under the right ones.
Week seven
The store opens four days before the season, which for them counts as early. In the first week a customer asks about returns, and the answer is already written down, with the source. In the third week Dasha wants to add filters, opens the plan, reads why they left them out, and agrees with her past self.
The notebook is now the store’s memory. When they hire someone to help with orders in winter, that person reads the pinned note first and does not have to ask either of them anything for the first two days.
A small brand decides to sell online. There is a supplier spreadsheet, a folder of product photos, a few notes about competitors and a chat where someone once explained how returns work. The two of you keep making the same decisions twice. Below is how a store notebook is set up in Kartoteq and how the team works in it until launch day.
How the notebook is laid out
Set up the notebook for two people
Create a notebook called Launch and invite your co-founder with the edit role. If a designer joins for a month, give them edit as well; the accountant gets view. Roles can be changed later, and the list of who sees what is always one click away.
Write the goal: “Launch a homeware store with a first batch of 24 products before the autumn season.” Answer the interview: who buys, what the average order is, where the goods are shipped from, what is already decided. AI proposes sections. Keep audience, catalogue, checkout and delivery, launch plan, and add Decisions by hand.
Pin a short note at the top: what we are doing, by when, who owns which section. Newcomers start there.
Bring the spreadsheet and the photos into the catalogue
Upload the supplier spreadsheet to the Catalogue section as it is. Next to it, make a table of your own with the 24 products: name, cost price, planned price, photo done or not. The product photos go in as attachments, one note per product, so a comment “the shadow on the mug is wrong” lands on the right photo.
Save the competitor notes as fragments with a link to the source page. If someone explained returns in a chat, paste only those paragraphs and mark where they came from. Later, when you ask AI “what do we know about returns”, it finds that note and the supplier’s terms, not a guess.
Ask for the first summary of the catalogue: which products have no photo, where cost price is missing, which of the 24 items the competitors already sell cheaper.
Argue in branches, not in the chat
The main disagreement in a small store is always the same: launch small and fast, or build the catalogue properly from the start. Open two branches in the Launch plan section. Branch A: twelve products, one delivery option, checkout in three steps. Branch B: room for 300 products, categories and filters.
Each branch has its own discussion, so one of you can work in A on Tuesday while the other works in B. Compare by the same criteria: weeks of work, money up front, what breaks when the second batch arrives. Mark the good parts with “Keep”: the three-step checkout from A, the category structure from B.
The consolidated plan shows next to every item which branch it came from and which discussion decided it. Where the two picks conflict, AI flags it and you settle it in comments with an @mention.
Write decisions down the day you make them
The Decisions section is a plain list of dated notes: “12 September. Free delivery from 1,500. Reason: the competitor table, line 4. Discussed in Delivery branch.” One note per decision, a link to the discussion, a link to the source. This is the part the team thanks itself for in two months.
When a decision changes, do not edit the old note. Add a new one and link back: “Replaces the decision of 12 September.” Version history keeps the rest.
After launch, the notebook stays as the store’s memory. The supplier terms, the photo rules and the reason you did not do filters in the first version are all still there, and a new person reads the pinned note first.
What is left when the project ends
A notebook you can open a year later and still understand: the sources, the discussions and the result, with the reason next to every decision. If the next project is similar, you start from here instead of from an empty page.
Where to go next
Work on one notebook togetherBuild a project knowledge base that stays useful
Start with one notebook.
The Personal plan is free: notes, files and search. AI and shared notebooks can be added later, when a project needs them.
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