Brett Farley runs B&L Motorcycles Ltd out of Fareham, Hampshire. Specialist repairs, carburetor rebuilds, ultrasonic cleaning, brake restoration, full recommissioning — over 32,000 genuine parts in stock and the technical knowledge to back every one of them.
The problem: none of that showed up online.
The Before
A GoDaddy website that looked abandoned. £45 a month. Over four years, that's £2,160 — for a template with a phone number on it. No e-commerce. No inventory system. No invoicing. No automation. eBay sales written manually. Workshop stock tracked in someone's head.
The brief wasn't "build a website." It was: build everything a real business this size should have.
The Hosting Fix — Before Anything Else
Before writing a line of code, the hosting was fixed. GoDaddy at £45/month became a proper arrangement at £220 for four years — a saving of £1,940 over the same period, with full e-commerce capability included. GoDaddy never offered e-commerce at any price Brett was paying.
That number usually lands first with people. The client pays less and gets incomparably more.
What Was Built
The marketing site. GoDaddy scrapped entirely. A modern React/Vite site with six specialist service pages — repairs, restoration, carb work, ultrasonic cleaning, brake rebuilds, recommissioning — deployed to Vercel with proper SEO, Google verification, and Open Graph meta.
The hybrid dropshipping platform. A Next.js storefront backed by Supabase/PostgreSQL with 11,834 products from two trade suppliers (Bike-It and Llexeter) and 141,839 fitment records covering make, model, CC, and year. Search by your bike, see what fits. Llexeter products enriched automatically — additional images pulled in, descriptions structured. Stripe checkout and webhook-driven order creation.
The workshop admin system. Login-gated, code-split from the public site. Every workshop item gets a unique short code and a QR label. Scan the bin with a phone → item record opens instantly. Update stock. Mark sold. Photo, location, eBay link all in one place. Printable label sheets. Before: "where's that part?" meant walking the workshop guessing. After: scan the bin, done.
The invoice generator. BL001, BL002, BL003 — sequential numbers assigned by a Postgres sequence, atomic so two invoices can never collide. Line-item entry with a live running total. Branded, print-to-PDF output. No VAT lines (Brett isn't VAT registered — correct, not an oversight).
The eBay operation. Two active UK storefronts: bnlmotorcycles (2,300+ sales, 100% positive) and blmotorcycles (1,100+ sales, 100% positive). Listings generated programmatically from the product database. The integration is a custom eBay MCP server — built before MCP connectors existed as a standard category. OAuth handling, API mapping, tool definitions — all designed and built from scratch. A custom Google MCP and Supabase MCP run on the same dedicated VM, also built before off-the-shelf versions existed.
The automation layer. Four n8n workflows running continuously: dispatch email fires when an order ships, overdue escalator flags stuck orders, oversell guard catches stock conflicts before they become problems, weekly summary gives Brett a performance digest every Monday. All of it without any manual intervention.
The NFC digital business card. Brett's contact details live at kliqt.co.uk/card/bl — a bespoke card with a video banner, animated smoke effects, and gold accent design. One tap: call, WhatsApp, email, website, Google Review link, eBay shop. "Save to contacts" downloads a proper vCard. The Google Review button goes directly to his review page. Programme any NFC tag to the URL and it's a tap-to-contact experience that updates automatically when details change.
The Result
Hosting: £2,160 → £220. Saving: £1,940. E-commerce included.
Two eBay storefronts with 3,400+ combined sales running largely automatically. An 11,800-part catalogue with full fitment search. Workshop inventory on a phone with QR labels. Sequential, branded, collision-proof invoicing. Dispatch automation, oversell protection, weekly visibility. A business card that drives Google reviews every time someone taps it.
The eBay MCP server was built before community versions existed. Brett spends his time on motorcycles.
[View the live site →](https://blmotorcyclesltd.co.uk) [Full case study →](/portfolio/case-studies/bl-motorcycles)