Airtable Product Development System

Freelance Project Brief

Airtable Product Development & Catalogue Management System

Client: Woodstock Laundry & Granadilla Swim

Project overview

We are a South African apparel business operating two brands, Woodstock Laundry and Granadilla Swim. We design, manufacture and sell clothing and swimwear through wholesale, retail and e-commerce channels.

We are looking for an experienced Airtable developer to build a centralised product development and catalogue management system.

Currently, our team manually creates and maintains PDF catalogues containing product photographs, CAD drawings, descriptions, colourways, fabric specifications, trims and other product information.

We want to replace this manual process with a user-friendly, form-based system that allows our team to capture product information once and use it to generate catalogues and eventually feed our inventory management and manufacturing systems.

Our immediate priority is catalogue creation, but the database must be structured to accommodate more advanced product development and ERP integration in future.

1. What we want to achieve

We want a system where our product team can:

Create new products through simple forms.

Upload photographs, CAD drawings, fabric swatches and technical drawings.

Enter descriptions, fabric types, colourways, sizes, thread colours, button colours and trims.

Record technical specifications and bills of materials (BOMs).

Duplicate existing styles and create new colourways without re-entering all the information.

Organise products by brand, season, collection and category.

Collaborate on product records with an approval process.

Generate professional PDF catalogues for internal and wholesale use.

Export approved product data in CSV format, with future API integration into our inventory management system.

The system must be intuitive enough for nontechnical staff to use daily.

2. Proposed Airtable structure

We envisage a relational database with linked tables covering:

Product and catalogue information

Brands

Seasonal Collections

Master Product Styles

Colourways

Size Variants / SKUs

Product Photographs and CAD Drawings

Catalogue Editions and Catalogue Items

Technical and production information

Fabrics and Materials

Buttons, Threads, Labels and Trims

Bills of Materials and BOM Components

Technical Specifications

Suppliers

Product Costings and Selling Prices

Workflow

Product Development Status

Approvals

Change History

ERP Export Status

We are open to the developer recommending a simpler or more efficient structure, provided it supports future integrations and avoids duplication of information.

3. User interface and functionality

We would like a clean, easy-to-use Airtable interface rather than requiring staff to work directly in database tables.

Ideally, the system should include:

New Product Form

A form where a team member can create a new product and enter all relevant information, including uploading multiple photographs or CAD drawings.

Product Detail View

A central product record showing the style, colourways, sizes, specifications, materials, BOM, pricing and approval status.

Visual Product Gallery

A gallery of products with photographs, allowing the team to filter by brand, collection, season, category and status.

Catalogue Builder

An interface where users can select approved products for a particular collection, arrange their order and generate a catalogue.

Approval Workflow

Multiple team members should be able to contribute information, with a final approval stage before products are published or exported.

4. Catalogue generation

This is a particularly important part of the project.

We need two catalogue formats.

Internal Product Catalogue

A PDF containing the product photograph or CAD, style code, product description, fabric specifications, colourways, sizes, threads, buttons, trims and other relevant technical information.

Wholesale Sales Catalogue

A more polished, branded PDF containing product photographs, descriptions, colourways, size availability and wholesale pricing where applicable.

We understand that Airtable may require integration with an external PDF generation platform. We would like the freelancer to recommend the most practical and cost-effective solution.

Both catalogues should be generated from the same underlying product records, without duplicate data entry.

We can provide examples of our existing catalogues to help define the layouts.

5. Product duplication and colourways

This functionality is important.

For example, if we develop a new colourway of an existing men's pyjama set, we should be able to duplicate the existing style, retain its technical specifications and BOM, then change the fabric, colours, artwork and photographs as necessary.

The system should support both completely new product designs and variations of existing products.

6. Future ERP integration

We currently use Cin7 for inventory management and are evaluating a new ERP platform.

The Airtable database must be designed to support future integration with these systems, potentially through APIs.

For the initial project, we require structured CSV exports of approved product data.

We do not require a live ERP integration during Phase 1.

However, we want to avoid having to rebuild the database when integration becomes necessary.

7. Project phases

Phase 1: Minimum Viable Product (Priority)

We want to get a functioning catalogue management system operational as quickly as possible.

Deliverables:

Airtable database and linked tables

Product entry forms

Photograph and CAD uploads

Master styles and colourway management

Visual product gallery

Seasonal collection management

Basic approval workflow

Internal PDF catalogue generation

Wholesale PDF catalogue generation

CSV export functionality

Phase 2: Product Development and Manufacturing

Additional functionality:

Detailed BOM management

Component libraries

Technical specifications

Product costing

Supplier management

More advanced workflows

Phase 3: ERP Integration

Potential API integration with our inventory and manufacturing systems.

We would like Phase 1 to be built with Phases 2 and 3 in mind, but quoted separately.

8. Technical expectations

We are looking for someone who has experience with:

Airtable database design and relational structures

Airtable Interfaces and Forms

Airtable automations

PDF and document generation integrations

Product information management systems

API integrations and CSV exports

Experience working with apparel, fashion, manufacturing or wholesale businesses would be a significant advantage.

We want a practical solution using existing software functionality wherever possible rather than unnecessary custom development.

9. Deliverables and handover

The successful freelancer should provide:

A functioning Airtable system owned by our business.

All required interfaces, forms and automations.

Working catalogue generation.

Test records demonstrating the full workflow.

Documentation explaining the database structure and integrations.

Basic training for our team.

A handover session and correction of any issues identified during testing.

All accounts, database access, automation configurations and integrations must remain under our company's control.

10. What we would like from applicants

Please provide:

Examples of similar Airtable projects you have completed.

Your experience with PDF catalogue generation.

Your recommended technical approach.

Your estimated timeline for Phase 1.

A fixed-price quotation for Phase 1, with any assumptions clearly stated.

Indicative costs for Phases 2 and 3.

Estimated ongoing software subscription and maintenance costs.

Details of post-launch support.

We would prefer to start with a short discovery session and review of our existing catalogues before finalising the scope.

Our objective is to build a simple, reliable system that significantly reduces manual product administration and can grow with our business.