The challenge
A niche retailer selling luxury perfume samples (small decants of 3ml, 5ml, and 10ml from premium fragrance brands) was selling through Instagram DMs and manual bank transfers. Order tracking was done in a WhatsApp notebook. Stock was managed by memory.
The owner wanted to move to a proper ecommerce setup but had a specific constraint: the business needed to scale quickly, and a separate website + backend system would be too complex to manage solo. The solution had to keep everything (storefront, orders, inventory, and invoicing) in one place.
Why Odoo Website
Most ecommerce businesses use a separate storefront (Shopify, WooCommerce) connected to an ERP through integrations. For this business, the simpler path was Odoo Website, which builds the storefront directly inside Odoo; there is no separate integration to maintain, and product, inventory, and order data is always in sync.
What we built
Odoo Website storefront
- Product catalogue structured around fragrance families (floral, woody, oriental, fresh) with filtering by brand and size
- Sample decant listing format: product photos, brand name, concentration (EDP/EDT/EDP Parfum), available sizes with individual pricing
- Customer accounts for order history and reorder
- Mobile-optimised layout, as the majority of buyers discovered products on Instagram before purchasing on mobile
Sales & checkout
- Multi-currency payment support (INR; USD for international orders)
- Coupon codes for influencer partnerships
- Automated order confirmation and shipping update emails
Inventory management
- Each decant size tracked as a separate product variant (e.g., Fragrance X · 3ml, Fragrance X · 5ml)
- Stock deducted automatically on order confirmation
- Low-stock alerts triggered when any variant drops below 5 units
- Restocking purchase orders raised directly in Odoo when full bottles are purchased for decanting
Invoicing
- GST-compliant invoices generated automatically for every order
- B2C invoices emailed immediately on dispatch
Delivery
The project was delivered in 6 weeks, faster than a typical ecommerce implementation because the Odoo Website builder, with minimal customisation, produced a functional storefront. The bulk of the time was spent on product data entry (photographing and describing 80+ fragrances across 3 sizes each), configuration, and payment gateway integration.
Results
- Revenue from the first week: the storefront went live on a Friday; the first 14 orders arrived over the weekend
- Zero manual order processing: the previous Instagram DM + bank transfer workflow was completely replaced; the owner now checks the Odoo order list once in the morning
- Stock accuracy: the owner had been running out of popular sizes unexpectedly; low-stock alerts meant reorder bottles were ordered 2 weeks before running out instead of after
- Customer retention: customer accounts and reorder functionality contributed to a 40% repeat purchase rate within the first 3 months