The Challenge
A rare and antiquarian bookseller sells one-of-a-kind books, photographs, and documents to collectors around the world, from its galleries and online. Every item is unique, and the business depends on knowing each piece in detail, knowing each collector’s interests, and making sure an item is never promised to two people at once.
Before bSpace, that knowledge lived in an aging desktop application holding decades of inventory and customer history. The bookseller wanted to modernize without losing any of that history, and it needed one system that every part of the business could share.
The bookseller needed a system that could:
- Manage cataloguing, pricing, and availability for a large inventory of unique items.
- Keep customer relationships and purchase history in one place for the whole sales team.
- Keep inventory status accurate across three galleries and the website at the same time.
- Produce printed catalogs and daily reporting without manual assembly.
The Approach
BRIO treated bSpace as a long-term product rather than a one-time project. After an extensive discovery phase interviewing the people who buy, catalogue, sell, and ship books, the team built a custom web application around the bookseller’s actual workflows, then rolled it out and kept improving it.
That relationship now spans more than a decade. Work is organized under a master services agreement with scoped work orders for larger enhancements, alongside ongoing support that covers day-to-day user help, routine database and application maintenance, and a steady stream of improvements requested by the people who use the system every day.
The Solution
Inventory Built for One-of-a-Kind Items: Each record carries full cataloguing, descriptions, financial details, and its source, including purchases made at book fairs. Availability states and a hold system with soft, firm, and exclusive holds make it clear which items can be offered and to whom. Bindery work orders track pieces out for restoration.
Customers and Sales in One Place: Customer profiles, activity history, and advanced search give every sales rep the same view of a collector. Quotes, invoices, payments, and shipments run through bSpace, with integrated card payments. Duplicate customer records are merged in regular batches to keep history clean.
Publishing to the Web: Books and their images are published to the company’s website directly from bSpace, and price and availability changes sync automatically. Website sales, holds, and customer accounts flow back into bSpace, so the galleries and the website always work from the same inventory.
Catalogs and Images: A catalogs module handles catalog production, with an image manager and a description editor that exports formatted descriptions for print. Photographers drop images into a sync folder and they attach to the right inventory records automatically.
Reporting That Arrives Every Morning: Scheduled reports deliver daily sales, web activity, and new-inventory summaries to the team, alongside sales summary reports that can be broken down by location and sales rep.
A Platform That Keeps Growing: Over the years bSpace has added single sign-on with the company’s Microsoft 365 accounts, offline access on laptops, data exports that power dedicated collection websites, and performance tuning that keeps searches fast as the data grows.
Technical foundation
- Custom ASP.NET web application
- Microsoft SQL Server with SQL Server Reporting Services
- Automated synchronization with the company website for inventory, holds, customers, and sales
- Integrated card payment processing
- Microsoft 365 single sign-on
- Automated image sync from photography to inventory records
The Impact
bSpace has been the operational core of the business for more than a decade:
- Galleries, sales, shipping, and accounting work from one shared system instead of separate tools.
- Inventory status stays accurate across three locations and the website.
- The website integration made it possible for the bookseller to grow a successful eCommerce business on top of its gallery sales.
- The system has stayed stable through regular maintenance while continuing to add capabilities year after year.
The lesson is less about any single feature than about the relationship. Custom software earns its keep when the team that built it stays close enough to keep it fitting the business as the business changes.
