Pig Brig Trap Systems

About Pig Brig Trap Systems

Pig Brig is a feral hog trapping system that was developed by wildlife ecologists, Tony and Vickie DeNicola and marketed through Field Engine Wildlife Research, an environmental services and solutions company. The Pig Brig trapping system has an interesting inception story.

The founders of Pig Brig Trap Systems started a non-profit organization back in 1995 called White Buffalo that conducts research and management projects worldwide. On one such project in Guam where the White Buffalo team had set out to eradicate feral hogs in a fenced area, they faced a problem. The presence of unexploded ordnance from WWII in the soil made it impossible for them to place metal objects into the ground or take any action that would disrupt the soil. Instead, they hung nets from trees and used remotely triggered gates to trap the pigs. As it turned out, the nets were more effective than the metal gate. So the net was then upgraded to create the Pig Brig product that it is today.

Pig BrigTrap Systems being a venture with a small product range, had a well-built website set up on Shopify that didn’t need much fluff. But it needed certain integrations and features to function properly. This is where Codaemon came in.

How we did it

Technology

Shopify AWS EXEMPTAX

Challenge

Integration of custom features for:

Sales tax exemption of B2B retailers with a tax-exempt certificate
Extended warranty program exclusive to Alabama residents purchasing through the state’s Feral Swine Control Program
Gamified testimonials with leaderboard features and mapped catch locations
Automating internal emails for packing slip generation and order fulfillment

Solution

With AWS server acting as a middle layer between Shopify and Shopify frontend customers or any third-party services, things became easy. We used the AWS server to build custom applications for all the above features. These apps fetch the data from Shopify. The middle layer receives the data, parses it, modifies it, and sends it to the Shopify frontend or triggers emails as required.

Outcome

Backed by Codaemon’s expertise in all the required integrations, Pig Brig Trap Systems is now a more interactive and well-equipped site focused on optimizing customer experience and managing internal order communications more efficiently.

Facilitating Tax Exemption

Pig Brig Trap Systems sells to individuals as well as businesses across the world. For businesses that are exempt from sales tax, Pig Brig needed to include an option for the respective retailers to upload their tax exemption certificates. Since Pig Brig is built on Shopify, the best-suited tax certificate management solution was EXEMPTAX. So, we installed the custom app from EXEMPTAX in Pig Brig’s Shopify backend and embedded a form on the website that retailers can fill out to avail of tax exemption. A ‘Tax-exemption Certificate’ link has been placed in the footer of the website for easy navigation to the form with a tooltip displaying the details of how to upload tax certificates. Another link has been placed on the Cart page so that there is no way users can miss it. When a user clicks on this link, they are directed to the Login page (if not logged in) and subsequently to the certificate submission form window. Once uploaded and verified, the user gets a tax-exempt tag from Shopify admin and is then automatically exempted from tax payment while purchasing a Pig Brig product.

Warranty Program for Alabama

Alabama has introduced a Feral Swine Control Program to provide financial and technical assistance to Alabama landowners to conduct wild pig removal operations. Pig Brig Trap Systems has been featured among the list of hog trap manufacturers on the official website of this program. To be able to help further in the cause, Pig Brig offers a 4-year extended warranty to those who purchase their traps through this program. Since this benefit is exclusive to Alabama residents, Pig Brig needed it to be closed offering on the site. Here’s how the system works and how we helped:

1. Pig Brig sends Alabama state representatives a PDF describing the warranty, 200 unique certificate numbers, and a sheet of registration instructions for the customer. For this, we generated certificate numbers, saved them into the AWS database, and marked them as unused.

1. After a customer purchases and installs a trap system through the program, a District Feral Swine Coordinator visits the trap site to certify whether the project is ready for payment and whether the trap is a Pig Brig

1. If everything checks out, the Coordinator issues a unique certificate number from the list. This certificate number along with the PDF of the warranty and registration instructions is then emailed to the customer.

A unique URL for the warranty page (which is hidden from search and site navigation) is also provided where customers can fill in their order details to avail of the 4-year warranty. For this, we built a template for the warranty page and a form for customers to enter order and certificate numbers. Upon submission, the order note is updated into Shopify, and the certificate number gets marked as ‘Used’.

Adding a ‘Catch Club’ Feature

Pig Brig’s ‘Catch Club’ is a sophisticated testimonial feature. Users can fill out the ‘Catch Club’ form with details of their catch including location, number, catch story, etc. and upload photos and videos of the catch. These catches are then displayed on a leaderboard with an option to filter the top 10 catches per month and the top 10 catches of all time. The catches can also be viewed on a map according to zip codes. We created the form page template and the form with all the required fields and saved it to the database to be opened when a user clicks on the link. Upon submitting the form, a page with a unique URL containing these details is created in the Shopify backend. We also created the leaderboard template with the necessary filters and integrated Google Maps with zip-code-wise markers to display the catches. A customer-specific gallery listing page has been created that contains images shared by users with dates and times. Logged-in customers can view, edit, and share this page on social media.

Email Automation

We automated two email processes for Pig Brig Trap Systems:

Generating packing slips using order information from Shopify for fulfillment
Marking Shopify orders as fulfilled and updating tracking details once an order is shipped

For both these tasks, we created and integrated a custom app to automate the shipping procedure. Here’s what the app does: For the first part, we first wrote a Shopify create order webhook so that when an order is placed in Shopify, a call is made to the middleware application on AWS. This application captures the order webhook, parses it, stores the order response in MySQL database, and marks the order as unprocessed. A cron is set up in the AWS server which runs every 10 minutes. It picks up the 'unprocessed' orders, creates an email using the details needed for fulfillment, and sends it to Pig Brig. Once the email is sent, the order is automatically marked as processed. This second part comes into effect when an order has been shipped and the shipping confirmation email has been sent to Pig Brig by the custom app. We created a Zap which is triggered as soon as this email is sent to the Pig Brig inbox. It scrapes the email for order ID and tracking number and this information is passed on to the AWS database and flagged. A cron is set up on the AWS to pick up the tracking details, mark the order as fulfilled, and update it with the respective tracking number. In case this automatic update fails or an order is partially fulfilled, an email is sent to Pig Brig with the order ID and tracking number for manual intervention.