Astor Chocolate B2B Store

Astor Chocolate is a fourth-generation family business, carbon-neutral manufacturer, and ethically-sourced chocolate brand that serves hospitality buyers, retailers, and direct consumers.

We modernized their digital storefront to manage seasonal product launches, limited-edition collections, and custom corporate packaging — all from one Magento 2 platform.

Catalog and pricing rules are where B2B and B2C projects quietly diverge — document segment logic before the first sprint demo so stakeholders do not debate edge cases mid-build.

Inventory truthfulness matters more than feature count: buyers forgive missing filters faster than wrong stock or ambiguous lead times.

Delivered for a fourth-generation us chocolate manufacturer in 18 weeks — scoped as a fixed-milestone engagement with weekly demos and named owners on both US and Vietnam sides.

Managing seasonal lines (such as the "Summer of Soccer '26" and "America 250" collections) and custom packaging

SKUs in a legacy system created inventory confusion and slow time-to-market for new launches.

Legacy ERP constraints often dictate sync frequency and write-back rules. Surface those limits in discovery so product does not promise real-time stock when the middleware can only poll hourly.

Abandonment usually traces to approval friction, not UI polish — map who must sign off and how long that takes in production.

We implemented Magento 2 with custom collection management, a B2B wholesale portal with tiered pricing, and a custom packaging configurator that lets hospitality buyers upload branding assets directly through the checkout flow.

AWS S3 and CloudFront serve seasonal campaign images at scale.

Middleware layers should be observable: queue depth, last successful sync, and per-SKU error counts belong on an ops dashboard from day one.

Contract pricing and promotions need explicit stacking rules finance can explain on customer calls.

We measure success against baselines agreed in discovery — not vanity metrics added after launch. The table below captures headline numbers; narrative outcomes follow for stakeholder reviews.

Metrics should tie to business outcomes the client already tracks — attach dashboards to their weekly ops review, not only engineering retros.

Post-launch, measure reorder interval and support ticket volume on checkout — they predict expansion revenue better than page views.

Magento 2 ecommerce for a family-owned US chocolate brand — seasonal

collections, custom packaging orders, and B2B wholesale accounts.

Built with e-commerce-appropriate tooling — production-tested across Kan-Tek client squads. Choices favor maintainability and integration fit over novelty.

Stack choices should match integration burden: prefer boring, well-owned services for payments and catalog sync over novel databases.

Document extension points for phase-two features so the client roadmap does not force a rewrite.

Run through this checklist before go-live — assign an owner for each item and block the release window until sign-off. Skipping steps because of deadline pressure is how production incidents start.