Live availability lists for wholesale nurseries

The idea

Wholesale growers publish a weekly availability list, the single artifact the entire trade runs on, as an emailed or faxed PDF generated from a spreadsheet. Landscapers phone in orders against stock counts that were stale the moment the PDF was sent, the sales desk plays telephone all day, and half the calls end in “we sold out of those Tuesday”.

Horticultural ERPs like SBI and Picas solve this as part of five-figure implementations that a 10-person nursery will never buy. The wedge is refusing to be an ERP: keep the spreadsheet as the source of truth, make the upload-and-diff loop painless, and put only the customer-facing list and order sheet online. It is the highest-friction artifact in the industry, fixed in isolation.

Who pays

The nursery owner pays 79 USD/month. A mid-size wholesale grower moves 50k to 500k USD a season through that list; fewer sold-out-already phone calls and orders arriving as structured sheets instead of voicemail transcription is an obvious trade for the price of a pallet of pots. Distribution: state nursery and landscape associations (every state has one, with member directories), the trade press (Nursery Management, GrowerTalks), and the fact that every landscaper who orders from one nursery’s live list starts asking their other suppliers why they still send PDFs.

MVP scope

• Spreadsheet upload with column mapping, diff preview, and re-sync
• Public availability page with search, filters, tier-gated pricing, and print stylesheet
• Order sheet flow with soft reservation and sales-desk email
• Orders inbox with confirm/adjust that finalises stock decrements
• Price-tier codes managed by staff
• Skip for v1: online payment, delivery logistics, photos per plant, barcode/inventory scanning, multi-location stock

Build AvailList, a web app that replaces the wholesale nursery's emailed PDF availability list with a live page customers can order from. Stack: Next.js (App Router), Supabase (Postgres, Auth, Storage, RLS). Magic-link auth for nursery staff; landscaper customers need no accounts.

Sync, the critical feature: nurseries live in spreadsheets, so do not fight it. Staff upload an .xlsx or CSV export (or paste a Google Sheets share link that the app re-fetches on demand). Columns are mapped once (species/cultivar, size e.g. 3 gal or 2 in caliper, quantity available, price tier A/B/C) and remembered; subsequent uploads diff against current stock and show a confirmation of changes before applying. Rows with quantity zero drop off the public list automatically.

Public availability page at nursery.availlist.app/slug: searchable, filterable by category (trees, shrubs, perennials, grasses), shows live quantities, and prices only after the customer enters a nursery-issued price-tier code (wholesale prices are not public). The page has a print stylesheet so it degrades into the familiar paper list.

Order flow: customers add quantities to an order sheet, enter company name, phone, and desired pickup/delivery date, and submit. The order emails the sales desk, and quantities are soft-reserved (decremented on the public list, flagged pending until staff confirm). No payment online; wholesale runs on account terms.

Pages: public list, order sheet, staff dashboard (orders inbox, stock upload, tier codes, list settings).

Pricing: 79 USD/month via Stripe.