Dynamic Pricing Catalog

Evans Storage Containers sells and rents imported storage containers, a product whose purchase price fluctuates significantly week to week. The client had been managing prices through a spreadsheet — averaging recent purchase prices to arrive at a final sale price — but keeping that spreadsheet in sync with the website meant manually recalculating and updating every product listing every week. It was unsustainable, and existing e-commerce solutions had no way to accommodate this pricing logic.

Designed and developed independently as a freelance contractor. Built entirely with PHP and Laravel.

Rather than forcing the client into a standard e-commerce pricing model, I replicated the logic he was already using in his spreadsheet and built it directly into the admin panel. The goal was to reduce his weekly pricing workflow to a single input — the most recent purchase price for each container model — and let the system handle everything else automatically.

The platform includes a custom pricing engine where the client configures a set of adjustable variables: markup percentage, property tax percentage, and an RTO (Rent-to-Own) percentage that calculates a monthly payment plan for customers who want to own a container over time. Each week, the client logs in, enters the latest purchase price for each model, and the system automatically computes the final sale price and the RTO rate — no additional calculations, no manual catalog updates. The front end displays fully up-to-date pricing and RTO options on every product listing.

What had been a multi-step weekly process involving a spreadsheet and manual website updates was reduced to a single data entry task. Pricing across the entire catalog stays current automatically, and customers can see both purchase prices and monthly ownership options in real time.