Big Moves: Fanatics, Custom Products, and Building Our Own Seller Tools

A lot has been happening behind the scenes at TechBinBytes, and it’s time for an update. We’ve been heads-down on multiple fronts — from a major meeting with Fanatics to building software that we think is going to change how we run our Whatnot store.

The Fanatics Meeting

We had our meeting with Fanatics, and it went well. If you read our earlier post about pursuing a licensing deal, you know we’ve been producing sample products on our Glowforge Pro across a range of materials — two-tone acrylic, gold mirror acrylic, wood veneer, and more. We brought those samples to the conversation and showed them what we’re capable of producing.

We’re now in the process of working through next steps with them. The goal hasn’t changed — we want to take our laser-cut production capabilities and bring officially licensed merchandise into our live shows and our store. We’ll share more as things develop, but the meeting was a solid step forward.

Growing Our Inventory and Shows

One of the biggest things we’re focused on right now is building out better shows with more inventory. We’ve been sourcing harder, listing more product, and thinking about how to structure shows that keep people engaged from start to finish.

More inventory means more variety, better deals for buyers, and a more exciting live experience overall. We’re putting in the work now so that when you tune into a TechBinBytes show, there’s always something worth sticking around for.

Exploring a Custom Product Line

We’re also in the early stages of exploring a custom SKU that we’d produce in-house using our laser. I don’t want to go too deep into the details yet because we’re still figuring out exactly what the final product will look like, but we’re excited about the direction. The idea is to create something original that you can only get from us — something that takes advantage of the tools and skills we’ve built up in our makerspace.

More on this soon. For now, just know that it’s in the works.

Building Our Own Seller Software

This is the one I’m most excited about. I’ve been building a platform from the ground up that’s designed specifically to help live sellers like us run a better business on Whatnot.

The tools that exist right now for Whatnot sellers are either too basic, too expensive, or built as an afterthought by companies that don’t actually sell on the platform. I do sell on the platform, and I know exactly what’s missing. So I’m building it myself.

Here’s what the platform covers so far:

Inventory Management — Full inventory tracking with categories, conditions, cost basis, estimated values, SKUs, and photo storage. Everything tied together so you know what you have, what it cost, and where it is at any given time.

Show Planning — Build out your show lineup ahead of time. Assign inventory items to shows, set segments, define starting bids and buy-it-now prices, and reorder your lineup. When you go live, you already know exactly what’s coming up and in what order.

Payout Tracking & Analytics — Import your Whatnot payout data and automatically match sales back to your inventory. See your real margins after platform fees and shipping. Track performance across shows and over time.

AI-Powered Content Creation — This is where it gets interesting. The platform includes a full creative studio powered by AI. Generate ad copy, static images, UGC-style promo videos, text-to-speech, and more — all from your product data. The idea is that you shouldn’t need to hire a video editor or a graphic designer to promote your shows professionally.

Campaign Management — Connect your ad accounts and push creatives directly to Meta, TikTok, or Google from the same dashboard where you manage your inventory.

Chrome Extension — A companion browser extension that works directly on whatnot.com. Import your sales data with one click, track competitor streams, add inventory from search results, and generate promo content — all without leaving the Whatnot site.

The whole thing is built on Cloudflare’s edge infrastructure with a PostgreSQL backend, so it’s fast and it scales. I’m building this with the same stack we use for everything else — Astro, React, Tailwind, Cloudflare Workers, R2 for media storage, and Workers AI for the generative features.

It’s still in active development, but the foundation is solid and we’re adding features every week. The end goal is a single platform where a Whatnot seller can manage their entire operation — from sourcing to listing to selling to analytics — without duct-taping together five different tools.

What’s Next

We’ve got a lot of plates spinning right now, and that’s exactly how we like it. The Fanatics conversation is ongoing, our inventory is growing, the custom product line is taking shape, and the software is coming together fast.

Stay tuned — the next few months are going to be big for TechBinBytes.

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— TechBinBytes