How do you rebuild an overgrown shop with a cut-to-size configurator that nobody dares touch?

The solution: the plan first — then the hardest part first.

Instead of charging ahead: a rebuild strategy in 100 numbered points, split into four phases. Every point says what gets built, what it replaces and how you know it is done. “Nobody dares touch it” turns into a list you can work through — point by point, while the business keeps running.

Phase one takes the part with the biggest risk: the pricing engine with 16 discount tiers that calculate across the whole basket rather than per item. Get this wrong and you send wrong prices to long-standing customers. So the pricing logic was rebuilt first and checked against real orders from the old system — until old and new matched to the cent. Only then came the configurator, the catalogue and the interfaces. The rest is craft once the foundation holds.

Why this works — and where the limit is.

My AI pipeline reads overgrown code faster than any human ever could and delivers the drafts for the rebuild. But which of the 16 discount tiers stay, which special rule was an oversight and which one is a promise to a long-standing customer — that is the owner's call, not the machine's. Pricing logic is business policy, not a technical detail.

“The machine reads the old code. Which parts of it are law and which are legacy baggage is the owner's decision.”

Does this transfer to your business?

This case transfers to any shop with configurator or pricing logic that nobody dares touch. Whether it is cut-to-size, tiered pricing or customer terms grown over decades: the first step is never code, it is a numbered plan — and an honest answer about what has to be rebuilt and what is allowed to stay.

The reference for this case: Owner, B2B trade (North Rhine-Westphalia) — anonymous in the shop window, specific in conversation. Reference call on request → verification record