From two new retailers a month to six.
The firm
Hotel Mike is an independent bath, body and home-fragrance brand founded by Harriet Murphy. Its products include hand and body care, bath products and candles, developed with a focus on innovative ingredients and reducing environmental impact. The brand sells through its own website and a growing network of wholesale retailers. Wholesale was already an important part of the business, but finding and managing new retailers depended almost entirely on Harriet. Growth was limited by how many stores she could personally research, contact and follow up.
The problem
Harriet found potential retailers by searching maps, browsing Google and assessing shops individually on Instagram. She relied on experience and instinct to decide whether a store was right for the brand.
Once she found a suitable shop, she searched for contact details, wrote a personalised email and sent the same brand pack manually. Stores that were not ready often disappeared from the pipeline, while existing retailers were only contacted about new orders once they had already run low.
Orders arrived through unstructured emails. Invoices were created manually, outstanding payments were tracked informally and there was no single view of retailer relationships.
The process worked, but it could only grow by taking more of Harriet’s time.
What we did
We began by mapping the complete wholesale process across 13 steps, from identifying a gap on the map to securing reorders from existing retailers.
That showed where time was being spent, where information was getting lost and which missing steps were limiting growth. Over the four-week Sprint, we redesigned and implemented the full process.
The work runs in the Claude Cowork desktop app, connected to the tools Hotel Mike already used, so each step happens where the wholesale work already lives rather than in a separate chat window.
01 Store discovery and shortlisting
Searches target locations, gathers potential retailers, scores them against Hotel Mike’s own fit criteria and records a ranked shortlist with a clear reason for each recommendation.
02 Personalised outreach
Finds the appropriate contact and prepares a tailored pitch and brand pack. Harriet reviews every store and message before anything is sent.
03 Structured orders and tracking
A wholesale order form creates a structured record of every order, feeding delivery, invoicing and stock tracking without information being re-entered.
04 Relationships and reorders
Tracks each retailer’s orders, flags likely reorder points and keeps “not now” prospects in the pipeline for relevant follow-ups.
05 Invoicing and payment follow-up
Creates invoices from order data, runs payment reminders against agreed terms and gives Harriet a clear view of what remains outstanding.
What changed
15 → 60
Candidate stores assessed each month
15 → 55
Personalised pitches each month
2 → 6
New retailers secured in the first full month
Hotel Mike tripled its rate of new retailer acquisition without adding more hours to the process.
Harriet remained responsible for the decisions that mattered: which stores suited the brand, which relationships were worth pursuing and what ultimately went out under her name. AI handled the research, preparation, tracking and repetitive administration around those decisions.
In Harriet’s words
“Wholesale stopped being limited by how many shops I could find and email myself. In the first month, I went from two new stockists to six without spending more time on it. I still decided which stores were right for the brand, but all the work around those decisions became much easier.”
Harriet Murphy
Founder, Hotel Mike