From new product to partner inboxes in minutes, not days

The problem: great products, quiet inboxes

The distributor adds new products and brings popular ones back in stock several times a month. Its retail partners are small, independent shops, and the first shop to hear about a hard-to-get product is often the one that orders it.

Telling partners meant someone opening the store, checking that the product really was in stock and priced, finding the right photo, working out which partners carry that brand, writing a personal email to each one, and sending them all at a sensible hour. On a busy week that took an afternoon, so some alerts went out late and some never went out.

What the workflow does

The team described the process in plain language and built it as a set of connected Flowgraph workflows. An agent writes each email, fixed rules check and limit every send, and a person approves before anything goes out. Watch it run:

Read the steps

1. A product goes live and the store tells Flowgraph. The workflow starts by itself. Nobody has to remember to trigger it.
2. An agent checks the product. It confirms the product is published, in stock, priced and has a photo. A product that fails a check is held back and tried again later, so partners never get an email about something they cannot buy.
3. Several uploads become one email. Twelve products from one brand in an hour become one alert, not twelve.
4. An agent writes one email per partner. Each email names the partner, mentions what they already carry, and links straight to the product. The links are tracked, so the team knows who clicked.
5. A founder approves. Both founders get a review email with the drafts. One click approves, edits or skips. If nobody answers, the founders are reminded, and an alert nobody wanted is dropped rather than sent.
6. The send follows the rules. Emails go out in the partner's local business hours, never more than twice a week to the same partner, and never to anyone who has unsubscribed. One kill switch pauses everything instantly.
7. Agents handle the replies. A reply that asks about price or stock is matched to the right partner and alert. An unsubscribe request is honoured. Anything the agent is not sure about, such as a complaint or a damaged order, goes straight to a person with the full thread.
8. A weekly report closes the loop. Every Monday the founders see how many emails were sent, opened and clicked, which partners ordered, and which partners clicked but did not.

Why the founders trust it

An agent that writes to your customers needs limits. The ones that matter here are not clever prompts; they are ordinary workflow steps that the agent cannot skip.

• A person approves every send. Agents draft; people decide.
• Facts come from the store, not the model. Price, stock and links are read from the store and checked. The AI only writes the words around them, and the report's summary may contain only numbers the workflow has computed.
• Limits are checked at the moment of sending. Pausing works even for emails that were approved yesterday.
• Uncertain means a person. When a reply is unclear, the agent escalates it instead of guessing.
• Every run is recorded. The team can open any run and see what each step read and wrote.

What changed

• Partners hear about new products sooner. The first shop to hear about a hard-to-get product is often the one that orders it, so speed turns directly into orders.
• Every email is personal. Each partner gets a note that mentions what they already carry and links to the product, not a mass mailing.
• The team stays in control. Founders approve every send and can pause everything with one click, so nothing goes out that they have not seen.
• Replies stop being a chore. Questions are answered or routed, unsubscribes are honoured automatically, and anything unclear reaches a person with the full thread.
• The team can see what works. A weekly report shows who opened, who clicked, who ordered, and who clicked but did not, so follow-up goes to the right partners.

What comes next

The same workflows are being extended to send alerts to retail customers as well as partners, with the same approval step and the same limits. The weekly and monthly reports will show which emails led to orders, so the team can see what the extra revenue is really worth.