How Verelle Collective Built an Enterprise-Grade Retail Intelligence Engine With Stepper

TL;DR – How Verelle Collective Uses Stepper

Use case: Independent small business & ecommerce (Verelle + Verelle Collective)
Core outcome: Built an enterprise-grade retail intelligence engine without code
Time saved: ~20+ hours per week in market research and operational work
Business impact: New scalable retail intelligence service, plus more time for marketing/growth

Small businesses often feel like they’re running uphill: too many tools, not enough time, endless manual work, and no access to the kind of backend intelligence that big brands rely on. Samēra Ayani—known as Sam—knows this reality better than most.

For more than a decade, Sam tried to solve the same problem from every angle: why do independent small businesses—who make up the backbone of local commerce—get stuck with brittle tech stacks, manual processes, and fragmented data, while enterprise brands enjoy seamless intelligence and automation?

“Why do billion-dollar brands get enterprise-level intelligence, while small retailers are left duct-taping tools together?”

As a multi-brand operator, curriculum developer, POS and e-commerce strategist, and founder of Verelle Collective, Sam lived this question through every version of her career. Each role revealed a deeper truth: retailers weren’t struggling because they lacked skill. They were struggling because they lacked infrastructure.

When she discovered Stepper, that changed overnight.

“The first time I used it, my brain almost exploded. I thought, I’m sorry, what? Did somebody reach into my actual problems and solve them for me right now?”

Today, Verelle Collective is being built on Stepper. It’s the backbone of Sam’s business—in her words, “the power to customize my tools, systems, processes and workflows” without needing to code. Stepper didn’t just automate her tasks. It unlocked an entire new business model.

About Sam Ayani

Roles: Founder and Operator, Verelle Collective
Industries: Retail, Health and Lifestyle
Focus: Samēra Ayani is a retail intelligence architect and founder of Verelle Collective, building enterprise-grade automation systems for small businesses and lifestyle retailers.

The Challenge: A Fragmented Tech Stack and Thousands of Hours Lost

Sam’s background spans adult education, digital marketing, wellness, and retail. That experience brought one truth into sharp focus: the problems small businesses face are systemic, not isolated.

She had lived every pain point:

Inventory systems that don’t talk to POS systems
Platforms that don’t sync with e-commerce
Email marketing tools locked behind feature paywalls
Retail platforms with weak or nonexistent integrations
Endless manual curation, research, and reporting
Thousands of dollars lost to tools, developers, and workarounds

As she put it:

“I have come up against every problem that a small independent business owner could possibly come across… I’ve literally come across all of it.”

Even as her businesses evolved—from organic grocery to coaching to selling products online—the same technical bottlenecks followed her.

She tried everything: Zapier, Make, n8n, AutoKit, Pabbly, and all other Zapier alternatives. These tools were either too shallow, too technical, too expensive, or too fragile. Nothing delivered the level of control and intelligence she needed. And after years of trying to solve it on her own, she has paid dearly investing in systems that failed to deliver.

“I have invested five figures easily in trying to learn how to do things that still didn’t work… We’re broaching six figures when we’re talking about time sink.”

SMB operators like Sam don’t lack ability—they lack infrastructure. Stepper gave her the missing layer.

Discovering Stepper, an AI Workflow Automation Platform that Actually Thinks With You

Sam found Stepper almost by accident. A long-time Paperform user, she joined the new Stepper Discord community while she was deep in the weeds rebuilding her ecommerce store. But, busy trying to put together her automation stack, she didn’t actually open Stepper until weeks later.

When she finally did, the reaction was immediate.

“The first time I used Stepper, my brain almost exploded,” she said. “I thought, I’m sorry, what? Did somebody reach into my actual problems and solve them for me right now?”

Sam immediately saw what Stepper made possible:

True conversational building with Native AI
Real visibility into logic
No need to “know the how” - Stepper works with you
API-level power without coding, all supported by conversational AI
A way to unify all her tools—finally

Stepper didn’t expect her to wrestle with logic, endpoints, polling times, or custom code. Instead, it invited her into a conversation. She could describe the workflow she needed in plain English, and Stepper built the structure, explained the logic, and showed her exactly how the pieces fit together.

Stepper wasn’t “another automation tool.” It felt like a new category altogether. She realized the thing she’d been chasing for 15 years was now in front of her.

“I don’t have to know the "how" beforehand. Stepper teaches me the how. Stepper works out the how… I get to go in and have a conversation.”

For the first time in her career, the ceiling wasn’t technical. She wasn’t fighting the tool. She wasn’t duct-taping workflow apps together. She could finally focus on outcomes—the thing retailers have the least time for but need the most.

What This Small Business Expert Built With Stepper

Today, Stepper is the tool she is using as her foundation to build Verelle Collective. It fuels both her e-commerce store (Verelle) and her retail intelligence service (Verelle Collective).

1. Automated Inventory Intelligence

Her inventory management, which once required late-night cross-checking across multiple platforms, transformed into a continuous stream of insights. Stepper interpreted her POS data, surfaced reorder points, flagged vendor pricing, and highlighted emerging product patterns. Intelligence that she once believed belonged only to billion-dollar retailers was suddenly running on her own store.

“That level of retail intelligence was just not available to me before,” she said.

Stepper now analyzes her Lightspeed POS data:

Automatically checks stock levels
Generates reorder lists
Finds vendors with the best prices
Suggests competitive pricing
Surfaces market trends and movement

“That level of retail intelligence was just not available to me before.”

This alone replaces hours of manual data work—and expensive third-party apps.

Takeaway: If you’re repeating the same discovery questions every time, move them into a form that adapts to the person answering. Use in-person or video calls to solve problems, not gather data.

2. Automated Market Research

Her weekly market research, a hours-long ritual of scanning Amazon, vendor sites, and marketplace trends, now ran in the background. Stepper watched the data, made connections, and presented information she once gathered manually.

“All of that is going away,” she said. “Probably 20 hours a week.”

What once took her 20+ hours a week now runs automatically:

Product performance analysis
Vendor price comparisons
Amazon and marketplace benchmarking
Margin and pricing recommendations

3. Backend Retail Workflows

Her abandoned-cart flows, once constrained by the limits of an email platform, expanded into true AI-assisted logic based on inventory, purchase behavior, customer patterns, and profitability. Loyalty sequencing, triggered replenishment emails, and accounting reconciliation began working the same way. Tasks that once required separate platforms, expensive plugins, or hours of elbow grease became part of one unified system she understood and trusted.

“Abandoned cart recovery is automation 101,” she told us, “but now I don’t need email platforms to do this anymore.”

She’s building workflows and business process automations that go far beyond simple automations:

Dynamic abandoned-cart recovery
Automated product recommendations
Inventory-triggered email sequences
Loyalty workflows with dynamic rewards
Unified POS-to-QuickBooks reconciliation

4. Her Secret Retail Engine

This is the secret workflow that Sam says will completely transform her business—and her clients’. And one she is playing very close to her chest.

Sam has spent years building an intuitive sense for her industry. It is her superpower—and it was entirely stuck in her head.

Until Stepper changed that.

She has begun building what she now calls her “baby”: a engine that will automate her secret processes and transforming it into a reusable, automated intelligence layer.

“I can't tell you too much, but will say I can now take what's in my brain, take it out of my head, automate it… and I immediately get all of those hours back,” she said.

Stepper will enable her to convert her intuition and buying criteria into reusable logic
Stepper will cut 10–15 hours of weekly manual work
Stepper will democratize the kind of intelligence big retailers guard tightly

This workflow will become the foundation of her new retail intelligence offering and is possible because of Stepper.

The Impact of Stepper: Time Back, Money Back, and a New Business Model

Sam calculates that Stepper gives her:

20+ hours back every week
Thousands saved on tools
No need for additional staff
Freedom to focus on marketing, growth, and customers
A scalable system she can package and sell

“Because of Stepper, I really will be able to grow. My time is much more valuable as an owner spent on growing the business… all those dollars I was spending, now I get to put that into marketing.”

Why Stepper Is the Right Automation Platform for Small Business

For Sam, Stepper didn’t remove the work. It removed the friction. It gave her back the hours she had traded away, the clarity she kept fighting for, and the intelligence she always knew she should have access to.

Above all, it changed the relationship she had with her business. Instead of bending her processes to the tools available, she could finally shape tools around the way retail should work.

“Don’t bother with anything else,” she said. “Jump into Stepper now. It’s light years above the other tools. I don’t have to worry about the how any longer. Just outcomes. It gives me the power to customize my business the way I need it to.”

For the first time, she has a platform that matches her ambition: a system that thinks with her, learns with her, and scales with her.

That’s what Stepper unlocks: clarity, intelligence, and control—without the friction.

If you’re ready to build workflows that actually work the way your business does, Stepper is ready when you are.

Get creating now.

Q&A With Sam On Why Stepper Just Works

Q: What were the biggest pain points in your retail operations before Stepper?

Sam spent years stuck between tools that refused to work together, forcing her to manually connect systems that should have been automated.

“Inventory systems that don’t talk to my POS system, that doesn’t talk to my email marketing system… I knew this was possible because big retailers have this ability. It made me angry that I couldn’t.”

Q: What made Stepper different from Zapier, Make, or n8n?

After trying every major workflow automation platform, Stepper was the first that actually explained its logic and let her understand what was happening behind the scenes.

“I don’t have to know beforehand the how. Stepper’s integrated AI teaches me the how. Stepper tells you what it’s thinking. I have a much deeper understanding of APIs now.”

Q: How much time does Stepper save you each week?

The shift was immediate—automation finally worked the way she needed, freeing up hours she used to lose to repetitive analysis and manual work.

“Easily 20 hours a week.”

Q: What is Sam most excited to build next?

Her focus is on turning her deep product intuition into a scalable, automated asset for her business and clients.

“My new back-end engine. That’s really where my business is going to shine.”

Q: Would you recommend Stepper?

There’s no hesitation in her answer—Stepper solved the problems she’d been battling for more than a decade.

“My gosh, don’t bother with anything else. Yes.”

Ready to build workflow systems that scale your business?

Sam didn’t adopt Stepper. She built a her business on top of it.

Verelle Collective exists because Stepper makes enterprise-grade retail intelligence accessible to independent retailers—without engineering teams, without duct tape, and without guesswork.

This is what Stepper was designed for:

Clarity you can trust
Performance without complexity
Automation that adapts to you
Power without code
Control without friction

If you’re an operator, solopreneur, or retailer who’s tired of bending your business to your tools, Stepper flips the equation.

**Ready to start building workflows that actually work? Create your free Stepper account**.

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