Re-engineering E-commerce for
Advanced Manufacturing.
How we rescued a premier 3D printing manufacturer from an overgrown, sluggish WooCommerce template — then extended the platform with operational tooling and grounded AI assistants for customers and staff.
Performance Yield
300%
Faster Page Loads
System Bloat
0%
Plugin Reliance
Infrastructure
100%
Stack Ownership
The Barren Soil: An Overgrown System
Great Lakes Additive is a premier 3D printing and manufacturing company based in Traverse City, MI. Their physical operations were precise and state-of-the-art, but their digital infrastructure was stifling their growth.
They came to Cusic Digital relying on a traditional WordPress site bloated with third-party plugins. When they launched their e-commerce store via WooCommerce, the cracks began to show immediately. The site was sluggish, database queries timed out, and managing their complex inventory through a rigid, template-based platform was nearly impossible.
The New Custom Architecture
The Solution: Deep Roots & Custom Engineering
We pruned away the bloat and started from the soil up. Cusic Digital architected a fully custom, decoupled e-commerce platform.
- The Front-End: We utilized Next.js and TypeScript to create a lightning-fast, highly responsive user interface that showcases their 3D printing services flawlessly.
- The Back-End: We built a robust, secure infrastructure using Node.js and a custom PostgreSQL database, ensuring data integrity and rapid load times regardless of traffic.
- The Integrations: We seamlessly integrated Stripe for frictionless, secure payments and Shippo for automated, reliable order fulfillment.
The Yield
Great Lakes Additive now completely owns their digital stack. They are no longer renting space in a slow, plugin-dependent ecosystem. The new platform performs beautifully, handles transactions securely, and scales effortlessly alongside their manufacturing output.
True to our partnership model, Cusic Digital remains by their side, providing sustained maintenance and optimization to ensure their digital presence remains a powerful, durable asset.
Continued Cultivation: Grounded AI Assistants
As the platform matured, customer journeys and internal workflows grew more capable — and more complex. Cusic Digital added a pair of grounded AI assistants: one for visitors on the public site, one for staff inside the admin portal. The goal was credible help that reflects how the product actually works, not a generic chat plugin.
Surfaces
2
Customer site + admin portal
Approach
Grounded
Approved knowledge, not open-ended search
Internal view
Live
Queue snapshot for staff
Rather than a third-party chat bubble, assistants are built into the same custom stack as the store — API, admin portal, and public app — so answers stay aligned with real product behavior.
- Customer assistant — contextual help on key pages, grounded in approved site content and live catalog data. Suggested prompts adapt to where the visitor is in the journey.
- Staff assistant — embedded in admin with a live snapshot of what needs attention, plus workflow guidance the team can edit without a code deploy.
- Guardrails— explicit rules against inventing policies, customer data, or steps that don't exist in the product. When unsure, the assistant defers to a human.
Read more about the pattern on our Insights blog, or visit greatlakesadditive.com to see the platform in production.
“Eamon at Cusic Digital is highly intelligent with a creative side which makes him a very valuable asset to our company. We intend to utilize his expertise... for as long as he is available. All around great person to have on our team. Reliable, expeditious and courteous are but a few of his positive traits.”
Brandon Williams
Great Lakes Additive LLC
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