Carlos Hernandez Villegas

Project Overview

Sakura Store Nicaragua began as a small Facebook-based shop selling anime plushies and merchandise. My wife originally started the store as a hobby about two years ago, managing a small catalog of roughly 20 products through a Facebook fan page.

As the store gradually grew to nearly 300 products, managing inventory, product information, and customer inquiries through social media alone became increasingly complicated.

To support the continued growth of the business and simplify product management, I decided to build a dedicated e-commerce platform for the store. I began developing the site during the December 2025 holidays using a modern headless commerce architecture.

Challenge

• Transition from a Facebook-only store to a scalable platform.
• Manage a growing catalog approaching 300 products.
• Create an architecture ready for AI and automation.
• Provide efficient product search and information retrieval.
• Integrate marketing channels such as Facebook and WhatsApp.

Architecture & Solution

The platform uses a headless WooCommerce architecture where WordPress acts as the commerce backend while a Slim 4 PHP application serves the frontend.

GraphQL is used instead of the standard WordPress REST API, allowing the frontend application to efficiently retrieve products, users, pages, and orders from the WooCommerce backend.

AI Integration

An experimental AI product assistant powered by WooCommerce MCP allows customers to ask questions about products such as models, colors, availability, and pricing. The long-term goal is to extend this system to assist customers throughout the purchasing process.

Automation Experiments

• Automated Facebook product posting using n8n.
• WhatsApp notifications for new orders.
• Workflow automation connecting store services.

Technologies

Development Status

Currently in active development during weekends and free time. The first public version is planned for release in May 2026.