How COCOLI automated furniture supply across three European markets
One-of-a-kind furniture had to be collected from suppliers, described, translated, priced, delivered and sold across several markets. That work could not scale as a sequence of manual handoffs.
Devntech’s scope: Devntech built marketplace, supplier-integration, listing-assistance, search, delivery-pricing and internal-tool capabilities. Estimated time savings and current supplier counts are not published as measured outcomes.
Hero visual
Supplier inventory becoming a curated multilingual listing
A product record showing source data, generated copy and the published marketplace listing.
The engagement
What Devntech built for COCOLI
COCOLI operated a marketplace for pre-owned, ex-display and vintage designer furniture across Germany, Austria and Italy. Devntech built the supply, commerce and operational systems around unique inventory, where every item requires its own data, logistics and editorial decisions.
What we changed
- 1
Built an integrated marketplace and supply workflow for unique furniture.
- 2
Added AI-assisted listing preparation with human control.
- 3
Connected commerce, search, logistics pricing and internal operations in one platform.
Qualitative evidence
What changed operationally
- Supplier inventory moves through one intake, enrichment, review and publishing workflow instead of disconnected catalogue tasks.
- The same unique furniture record can support multilingual marketplace listings without duplicating the underlying product workflow.
- AI-assisted attributes and copy remain subject to a human curation step before publication.
Evidence standard: These are delivered workflow and operating-state changes supported by the project record. They are qualitative results, not estimated percentages or modelled savings.
What Devntech continued to own
- Marketplace engineering
- Supplier integrations
- Operational tooling
This is what we mean by
Workflow automationOperational flow
How the system works
The system is organized around three operational steps, with each handoff tied to a clear purpose and owner.
Workflow visual
Supplier feed, AI assistance, human review and fulfilment
An annotated supply workflow connecting catalogue intake to delivery and seller operations.
Step 1
Receive supplier data
Supplier information enters one operating workflow rather than separate country-specific processes.
Step 2
Assist listing preparation
AI assistance and human review help turn inconsistent input into usable multilingual listings.
Step 3
Price delivery and fulfilment
The marketplace connects unique-item commerce to the operational work required to deliver it.
What changed in practice
Capabilities built around the real workflow
Specific system capabilities, described by the operational job they do.
Product state
Human review of AI-assisted furniture content
A redacted curation screen with proposed attributes and multilingual copy.
- Supplier integrations
- Brings varying supplier data into an operable catalogue workflow.
- AI-assisted listings
- Supports human curation of descriptions and multilingual product data.
- Marketplace operations
- Combines search, checkout, trade purchasing, delivery pricing and administration.
Implementation detail
What made this system difficult - and how we handled it
The decisions below came from the operating constraints of this engagement, not from a generic technology template.
Why unique furniture could not follow a standard catalogue workflow
Most COCOLI products were listed once and sold once. Every sofa, chair or lamp could arrive with incomplete supplier information and still need its own category, attributes, description, price and delivery treatment. The same underlying record then had to support German, English and Italian without allowing localized content to interfere with commercial calculations.
Supplier intake created a second constraint. Brands supplied inventory through different files, taxonomies and update processes. Treating every new source as a bespoke import would make supply growth depend directly on engineering capacity. The platform needed a reusable normalization layer that could translate supplier data into one catalogue model.
AI assistance remained inside a human-controlled publishing workflow
Scheduled supplier connections collected incoming stock and mapped it into COCOLI’s catalogue structure. An AI-assisted step proposed product attributes, titles, descriptions and multilingual copy, but curation remained the publication control. The purpose was to reduce repetitive preparation work while keeping product context, brand presentation and exceptions under human review.
This boundary matters in a marketplace for one-of-a-kind goods. A generated description can be fluent and still misstate condition, material or provenance. Designing the interface around review and correction made AI a production assistant rather than an unaccountable source of catalogue truth.
Commerce, fulfilment and operations shared the same product record
Delivery pricing depended on destination, item size and handling requirements. A mixed basket could also contain items from different sellers or fulfilment locations. Devntech connected checkout to country-specific delivery logic and separated orders into the fulfilment and payout records needed for each item, while keeping the customer experience inside one marketplace.
The operating system extended beyond the storefront. Search, trade purchasing, stock corrections, promotions, approvals, reporting and customer-service actions were available through controlled tools rather than direct database work. Live-data changes were introduced in reversible phases. The broader lesson is that marketplace automation only scales when supply intake, editorial review, logistics and support are designed as one operating workflow.
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- For businesses with $5M to $30M in revenue
- No long-term commitment
- Start with one workflow
- Keep ownership of everything we build