Knack Blog

Featured Industry: Beer, Wine, & Beverages

Here at Knack we have the unique opportunity to see all of the web apps and online databases that are built for specific industries.

A great example is the beverage industry, where we”ve seen a particularly strong fit amongst the craft beer and wine sectors.

This attention may or may not be heightened by the near and dear place wine and craft beer holds in our hearts 🙂 Eric makes his own wine, Steve ran a wine blog, and craft beer is always on Brandon”s Christmas list.

Why Knack?

Many of the breweries and wineries we”ve worked with are big enough to have significant I.T. needs, but don”t have the technology budgets to pay for bloated software or full-time technology staff.

Many of these individuals not only manage “the books” but they wear several hats like purchasing agent, production supervisor or even brewmaster.

This is why Knack is so appealing: it”s quick, easy to use, and perhaps most crucially can immediately provide major benefits. Customized apps can quickly be built to help manage sales, inventory, and distribution without a huge investment in time or money.

This combination of simplicity and customization were exactly what appealed to Jessica Jones of Ninkasi Brewery:

“We needed a platform for group project management and collaboration. Other options were either not customizable enough or too complex to teach all of our staff at varying levels to use.”

Trey Bowden of Dogfish Head Brewery was pleased with the ease of use when creating a production management database:

“When I was recently tasked to build an internal database-driven app for “beer product holds & dispositions”, I knew Knack was the right tool to get the job done in a timely manner…You can”t beat the simple user interface, built-in reporting, and cloud-connected capabilities with it”s Zapier interface (as opposed to using something like MS Access).

“We just launched our first app in early 2015 and our production team couldn”t be happier!”

Here”s a look at some of the apps we”re seeing for beer and wine users:

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Case Study: Svelte Brands

Max Hauer is the founder of Svelte Brands – an operator of multiple E-commerce brands focused on fashion and beauty.

The trick for any modern E-Commerce company is managing product data, and lot’s of it.

It’s not as simple as maintaining a spreadsheet of your products — each product can be sold through various channels that may require a different set of data for the same product, including unique item numbers and SKUs.

Max was struggling to find the right platform to manage Svelte’s product data:

“We faced an existential challenge. How can we store, manage and update large numbers of products? How can we manage workflows of creating, copywriting, building product data for each product?”

Max turned to Knack to create a custom solution that simplified the entire process.

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Case Study: Great Food Group

Patrick Albrecht is a restauranteur in Atlanta, GA. He manages two busy restaurants and banquet venues for Great Food Group: Paul’s and Social Vinings.

Of course managing any one business alone is enough for most people, but two? How does Patrick and others like him do it?

“The restaurant industry has always been hesitant to adapt technology, but we’ve found using tech is essential for creating efficiencies,” is how Patrick put it.

Patrick explained that while employing technology leads to efficiencies, deploying multiple solutions can have it’s disadvantages.

“We had too many software services. We needed a single solution that could handle all of it.”

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Knack for Designers

When we first launched Knack we weren’t exactly sure who our target audience would be. Knack is a flexible product that can be used by anyone to manage all sorts of online databases.

We had some guesses, but we deliberately kept our marketing neutral. We wanted to throw Knack out there and see what happened!

One use case we’ve enjoyed seeing develop is web designers and front-end coders who use Knack to integrate online databases with client websites and their own applications.

In many cases it’s a perfect fit, as designers are able to take advantage of many core Knack functions:

• Knack apps can be embedded seamlessly right into a website, so designers can add online databases directly to their client websites.
• Knack apps can be customized with CSS, so designers can control the look and feel of the app. We hear designers love this.
• Knack apps can be customized with jQuery, so designers can add features and do even more customization of the UI if needed.
• Designers can set up a special client user roles, so clients can view and update database records without affecting the look and feel of the app.
• Designers can use the API if they ever need to add special functionality.

The bottom line is Knack enables designers to build online databases and web apps for their clients and still focus on what they do best: the look and the feel.

We’ve created a special page for designers at:

https://knack.com/designers

Know any web designers? Send them to the link above, we’d love to know what they think about Knack!

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